Britpop : Time For Reevaluation?

trouble in the message centre ugh

― everyday sheeple (Michael B), Tuesday, April 29, 2014 8:11 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

God, no! That's one of my highlights of Parklife alongside 'Badhead', 'London Loves' and 'Clover Over Dover'!

Wow, Trouble in the Message Centre is my favourite Blur song.

Really? I always felt it was a bad Gary Numan rip

Bluetones songs I quite enjoy.

Slight Return
Bluetonic
Driftwood
Carnt Be Trusted
Putting Out Fires
My Neighbour's House
Emily's Pine
Zorro
Broken Starr
Last of the Great Navigators
If...
Down at the Reservoir

That's probably double the amount of songs I like by Oasis.

Really? I always felt it was a bad Gary Numan rip

― everyday sheeple (Michael B)

I've always loved the new wave feel of it. Also it's one of their songs that sounds nothing like any of their others in any way.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/news/a567596/damon-albarn-country-house-and-roll-with-it-were-both-st.html

roll with it really is the worst oasis from their glory years.

If by The Bluetones is a very good song indeed

the music press did really lose the run of themselves in the latter stages of the Britpop era. heres the NME review of "the great escape".

http://www.vblurpage.com/articles/albums/escape_nme.htm

there was another review in MM ridiculously overestimating the album, calling it a classic pop record and comparing it to ABC's "The Lexicon of Love"

The Great Escape isn't a perfect album, but it's definitely not a bad one in my opinion. Just needs a couple of the lesser songs shaving off it.

No, its not a bad album but the hype around it was so OTT and unreasonable

there was another review in MM ridiculously overestimating the album, calling it a classic pop record and comparing it to ABC's "The Lexicon of Love"

― everyday sheeple (Michael B)

Ha, I like a lot of The Great Escape but they're comparing it to my favourite album of all time there. Just no.

I'm listening to All Around The World. It is literally the worst. I can't believe...

No wonder people think Britpop was terrible with this getting to number one. A song which sounds like it was written, lyrics and all, in less time than it takes to hear it.

Did people really buy this? For fun, or was it out of some strange misplaced civic duty? Fuck me.

xpost I'd love to read it again but I cant find it on the internet. I did buy the album on cassette on the back of that review.

I hate Britpop now.

But that NME-review doesn't seem that bad, it goes in depth with the music, and even points out the flaws. He likes it much more than I do, but that's just a matter of taste. There's nothing inherently wrong in that review, and espousing a minority opinion should hardly be embarassing.

xpost Haha, although I like the way the Bluetones kind of ripped-off All Around The World and made them much more tolerable. Mark Morriss had one of the better vocal ranges out of the second tier BP bands:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW8JG7om3i8

I'm listening to All Around The World. It is literally the worst. I can't believe...

No wonder people think Britpop was terrible with this getting to number one. A song which sounds like it was written, lyrics and all, in less time than it takes to hear it.

Did people really buy this? For fun, or was it out of some strange misplaced civic duty? Fuck me.

― 1 pONO 3v3Ry+h1n G!!!1 (dog latin), Tuesday, April 29, 2014 9:26 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Listening to Be Here Now on day of release, and especially after all the hype surrounding it, was an incredibly deflating experience for many reasons, but I particularly remember hearing this track for the first time and thinking "okay, this is just ridiculous".

The only reason I can think of that it got to #1 was that Oasis at that point still had a large enough fanbase that would buy any single that they put out. Maybe they were just completing their singles collections, or at least hoping the B-sides would be better.

I think it's what such a big hit because of the way Noel sings "These are crazy days but they make me sheeiiiine"

I remember my brother playing this album over and over and I remember sitting writing an email to a (baffled) friend as I was hearing it play through his door, detailing every stupid shitty new unbelievable 'worst bit ever', and All Around the World is the one that stuck with me for making me really mad

btw many x-posts but there's a Phonogram thread on I Love Comics

The best thing about All Around the World is that it is 9½ minutes long, and then there's a reprise of it at the end of the album. Like... I mean...

I mean, 2 min reprise, but still.

Is All Around the World the one with the Yellow Submarine video? I agree that was the worst, though I'd argue that every single from Roll With It onwards was also the worst.

Mark Morriss had one of the better vocal ranges out of the second tier BP bands:

LOL no he wasn't. He was by far the worst. His best days were worse than Ian Brown's drugged up worst.

.. Noel Gallagher said of the song, "With "Supersonic", I worried I was never going to write another song after that 'cos I thought, 'It sounds that good'... Two days later I superseded it by about 50 fuckin' times. The reason we haven't recorded that song is because there isn't enough money in Creation Records' bank balance to pay for the production of that record. When we do that record..." Noel also added when asked if there would be an orchestra on it, "Orchestras, man? It's not got to be one, it's got to be two".[citation needed]
Noel described the song shortly before the release of the album: "I wrote this one ages ago, before "Whatever". It was twelve minutes long then. It was a matter of being able to afford to record it. But now we can get away with the 36-piece orchestra. And the longer the better as far as I'm concerned. If it's good. I can see what people are going to say, but fuck 'em, basically."[citation needed]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Around_the_World_(Oasis_song)

Jamie Harding from Marion was, in my opinion, the best vocalist out of all of them. Better than any of the vocalists from the first-tier Britpop bands, I'd argue. Shame he was a Doherty-level drug fiend.

Jaime, rather.

Jamie did indeed have a great voice and a great look. Really wish he hadn't thrown it all away.

xpost some student next door blared "supersonic" two times in a row today. jesus im being plagued by britpop this week

Man, the centerpiece of my Oasis biopic will just be 45 min on the making of All Around the World, made like the bell-casting scene in Andrei Rublyev. Just going into every little detail as a bunch of cokeheads tramble all over this inane little childrens song.

Anyone else think At the Drive In had a bit of a Marion influence in them at times?

1.50 into this is basically a bit of a Marion song.

http://youtu.be/NrZ7ew8n5SU

will this Oasis biopic have a man made out of sausages?

Jamie did indeed have a great voice and a great look. Really wish he hadn't thrown it all away.

― Kitchen Person, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 10:34 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And great onstage too! I only ever saw Marion once, but they were great live.

Yeah I saw them too and they were fantastic. Why wasn't Miyako Hideaway a hit? Great song.

The Great Escape isn't a perfect album, but it's definitely not a bad one in my opinion. Just needs a couple of the lesser songs shaving off it.

As an innocent young man hearing it for the first time, I definitely though The Great Escape was an instant classic and deserved all the reviews it got. To use the gauche, corny references of the mid-90s, it was the Sgt Pepper's to Parklife's Revolver: lesser songs, but brilliantly conceived and produced. Yes, it doesn't stand up so much now, but it's still a pleasure to listen to pretty much from beginning to end. Mr Robinson's Quango is terrible and the Ken Livingstone song is too much, but otherwise I even like Top Man, which is just the Fun Boy Three played for laughs. Terrible lyrics, but even the best Blur songs (e.g. This Is A Low, as Taylor Parkes points out) have ridiculous lyrics.

No one writing up Britpop - at least the Blur end of Britpop - really seems to mention Martin Amis, which is strange, because his influence is so apparent on much of this stuff. London Fields, I think, more even than Money. He Thought of Cars couldn't exist without him, and he's in so many other songs. His reputation has suffered since the 90s in the same way Britpop's has. His style was also obviously a huge influence on many of the writers on the mid-90s music press. In Taylor Parkes' recent article you could still see those familiar sentence constructions - kind of comforting, kind of absurd.

What a sickeningly brilliant thread this is, it confirms my teenage hypothesis that 99.9% of people are diabolically clueless cunts who pretend to like music.

Since I discovered that Audacity has a function built into it so it emulates playing 45 singles at 33 1/3rpm, and because of this thread, I've been running various Britpop "classics" through it. 'Place Your Hands' by Reef slowed down is the funniest fucking thing ever.

What a sickeningly brilliant thread this is, it confirms my teenage hypothesis that 99.9% of people are diabolically clueless cunts who pretend to like music.

― xelab, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 11:12 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And the other 0.01% are just cunts?

Taste in music is 90% your geographical location/social networks/inherited physical and cultural traits and 10% the effort you put into socializing.

I've just reread some Martin Amis (Money and Success) and he is (or quite possibly ws) v great. Albarn mentioning him (London Fields specifically) in an early tiny Rolling Stone bit ws what made 13 or so yrold me read him, actually

The most spot-on Pulp parody:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVibsNPXBx0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tNUAumvfzg

Jarvis Cocker (Pulp) - vocals
Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead) - lead guitar
Jason Buckle (All Seeing I) - rhythm guitar
Steve Mackey (Pulp) - bass
Steve Claydon (Add N to (X)) - keyboards
Phil Selway (Radiohead) - drums

What a sickeningly brilliant thread this is, it confirms my teenage hypothesis that 99.9% of people are diabolically clueless cunts who pretend to like music.

― xelab, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 11:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

another great xelab post, can't get enough of that purple-faced transplanted Guardian commenter rage. keep tearing this place up chief

Just think..

(message ends)

did anyone enjoy the worst of britpop Spotify playlist?