Happy 1st Birthday, Shiny & New!

Shiny & New is 1 year old today and because of this, we'd like you to join us in a celebration of our morals and values. Our humble beginnings were an excuse for a group of queer-centric, culture-obsessed friends to rant about almost anything... early posts covered everything from Billie Piper, to new season trends, to British acting ingénue Juno Temple... but before long we morphed into a living, breathing, functioning, bitching music blog, with our very own small band of followers, a unique identity and a sort of mission that we could be genuinely proud of.

By whatever quirk of fate we've ended up writing almost exclusively about women in music, and whilst we don't by any means mean to exclude men (there are plenty of male artists we admire), the overwhelming bulk of our affections are reserved for the fair sex and all their shenanigans. We think this is important, and believing that the vast majority of music journalism written about women is distinctly 'meh' and borderline sexist, we're proud of our ability to wittily, warmly and 'irreverently' discuss the merits of Girls Aloud next to those of innovators and feminist icons like Madonna or Björk.

We suppose it's ironic that the main writers of this blog are actually gay men, not women, but nevermind... as long as there is pop, as long as there is folk, electronica, 'alternative', glam rock and a bevy of beautiful and talented artists pushing forwards and outwards, we will be here to document it. Here at Shiny & New you will find unpretentious and distinctly unbloggy musings on artists who usually only get mentioned when straight male bloggers fancy them, but you will also find pictures of Lady Starlight's vagina flaps. We didn't set out with any such grand plans, but we've discovered ourselves inhabiting them.

We are Shiny, we are new. And we love you.

xoxo