Britpop : Time For Reevaluation?

1) Dog Man Star - Suede
2) Different Class - Pulp
3) Vauxhall and I - Morrissey
4) The Masterplan - Oasis
5) Elastica - Elastica
6) Parklife - Blur
7) The Sound of McAlmont and Butler - McAlmont and Butler
8) Tellin' Stories - The Charalatans
9) 1977 - Ash
10) The It Girl - Sleeper

1. Free Peace Sweet - Dodgy
2. Radiator - Super Furry Animals
3. Homegrown - Dodgy
4. The Great Escape - Blur
5. Parklife - Blur
6. It Doesn't Matter Anymore - Supernaturals
7. (What's The Story) Morning Glory - Oasis
8. Moseley Shoals - Ocean Colour Scene
9. Fuzzy Logic - Super Furry Animals
10.Coming Up - Suede

Note that I don't count Radiohead as Britpop. If I did, then "OK Computer" would be at the very top of the list - beating even Dodgy at their best.

in America the only people who possibly cared about these acts effected bad English accents and dressed badly

Have we met?

You mean, just like several of the earliest Nuggets bands 30 years earlier?

But those guys were emulating the Rolling Stones, not bloody Blur.

Not at the start. The earliest Nuggets bands were emulating The Beatles. Listen to The Knickerbockers, The Gants or The Choir. Not a lot of Rolling Stones there, for certain.

not bloody Blur.

Sadly not, as 93-95 era Blur was clearly much better than 63-65-era Stones. :-)

Anyway, the Britpop bands didn't emulate Blur either. In fact, apart from obscurities such as Menswear and Octopus, no other Britpop bands sounded quite like Blur.

There were a lot of Oasis copycats around though.

The silver age was 1988-1991 My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive, etc.

After the death of shoegazing, lo there was a famine in the land of British pop. And into the valley of death stepped the Melody Maker, with their feeble attempt to manufacture "Suedemania". But the kids saw that Suede were shit, and a feeble attempt to copy the Smiths to boot, and then Bernard Butler quit the band, and the future of British pop looked bleak indeed. And into the valley of death stepped Blur, whose debut album was a weak blend of shoegazing and baggy/Madchester. But then Damon bought a Kinks album and declared that modern life was rubbish. And then Oasis appeared. And Blur and Oasis begat Pulp, and Sleeper, and too many other boring bands to count. And then an era of mediocrity reigned across the isle of Albion from 1994 - 1997.

Hopefully future generations will look back and realize that Massive Attack, Bjork, the Chemical Brothers and the entire dance scene was what was really happening during the Britpop era, and not the idiotic "feud" between Blur and Oasis.

*hums "Losing My Edge"*

shoegazing is getting much better press

Goddammit! I should have written that article! But that would have meant pitching to Hilburn and there are things I will not do.

I'd actually forgotten about The Bends. I'd have that in my top 10. so scrap Sleeper from my list.

who are you and what have you done with Calum?

No, I've settled on "you weren't"

No, I am completely indifferent when it comes to the rhythm section (unless it gets so dominant that it starts dominating - then I hate it). A drummer's only job is to keep the pulse.

Dodgy was the best band of that era, not the worst.

However, saying that Dodgy was a product of Britpop is wrong. They started out before Britpop started, and it would be more natural to compare them to acts like Lightning Seeds, Crowded House and Jellyfish - bands that already in the dark ages of music (1987-91 was the first period for music since before The Beatles) decided that they disliked the current unmelodic trend and settled for something classically melodic and influenced by the great 60s music.

I am not trying to defend Cast, because Cast just didn't have good enough melodies. Their choruses didn't stick in one's head like they should, and they were too harmonically boring too, sounding more like The Searchers than The Beatles.

The Levellers started out already in 1991 or so, and were never Britpop.

Duh!

I am not saying I dismiss all music from that era (for instance, Crowded House and Jellyfish made their best records then)

But out of the ones you mention Primal Scream, and to some extent Massive Attack, are the only ones I like. Generally the 87-91 era was too much about rhythm and noise and not enough about melody and harmony.

Dodgy never changed their musical style. Blur did. Blur more or less "invented" Britpop on "Modern Life Is Rubbish" (although Suede should get some credit for that too)

As for Pulp, well, maybe they weren't really Britpop. In fact, they were just playing the kind of Bowie/Roxy Music-influenced style that was so popular when they started out in the mid 80s, and for some reason they never broke through until that kind of music became fashionable again because of Britpop.

Someone may already have asked this but do you tap your foot or nod your head at all when you listen to music? If so, why?

(I am playing find the unconvincing, hastily concocted pseudonym)

Your definition of what was "really happening" in the mid-90s couldn't be any more Britpop if it tried...

'87-'91 was for me the most exciting time for music in my lifetime in terms of innovation and experimentation, perhaps not so much melody and harmony and quality MOR/AOR (tcha, big loss eh?). Geir's conviction that melody and harmony are automatically superior to rhythm and noise by definition do not match my own views obviously.

the way the big dance-based acts are attached to the Britpop concept is irritating, partly for me because i felt it was very much a 'them and us' conflict that prevailed throughout most of the 90s i.e. there were indie kids and there were ravers and never the twain shall meet, until the Chemical Brothers broke thru i guess. it was good that the likes of Tom n' Ed broke down that pathetic barrier but it always felt like it was more a case of the rockist indiekids finally starting to 'get' dance music rather than ravers discovering guitars (dare i say the dance fans were that bit more open-minded, given they were into what was genuinely a new thing? i would but its a horrendous generalisation on both counts)

Balls. That whole rock/dance thing was dead and buried by 92 - I remember bumping into loads of the britpop lot on the Brighton scene in '91 - and going to Trance Europe Express a bit later. The line was totally blurred - especially as britpop came out of Sarah, to some extent, and most of the Sarah fandom were loved up by the turn of the '90s (at least round my way).