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Led Zeppelin topped " NME Pop Poll " for consecutive three years ( 1974 – 76 ) under the category of the best " Vocal Group ".

The year 1976 saw punk rock arrive on what some people perceived to be a stagnant music scene.

The NME gave the Sex Pistols their first music press coverage in a live review of their performance at the Marquee in February that year, but overall they were slow to cover this new phenomenon in comparison to Sounds and Melody Maker, where Jonh Ingham and Caroline Coon respectively were early champions of punk.

Although articles by the likes of Mick Farren ( whose article " The Titanic Sails At Dawn ", a call for a new street led rock movement in response to stadium rock ) were published by the NME that summer it was felt that younger blood was needed to credibly cover the emerging punk movement, and the paper advertised for a pair of " hip young gunslingers " to join their editorial staff.

This resulted in the recruitment of Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill.

The pair rapidly became champions of the Punk scene and created a new tone for the paper ( Parsons ' time at NME is reflected in his 2005 novel Stories We Could Tell, about the misadventures of three young music paper journalists on the night of 16 August 1977, the night Elvis Presley died ).