Britpop : Time For Reevaluation?

actually its a fantastic article! well worth a read

http://thequietus.com/articles/15092-blur-parklife-anniversary-review

Self-congratulatory anti-Britpop screeds are now just as annoying and simplistic as rose-tinted Britpop nostalgia imo but the Taylor Parkes one goes so much deeper, bothers to study individual songs rather than make grand generalisations and admits that he was a participant.

My problem with the Taylor Parkes article is that it assumes so much from Britpop, and Blur particularly. There's something almost gleefully revisionistic about these anti-Britpop articles in that many of them don't even get the facts straight in the first place. They blame Britpop for everything that was shit about the '90s - even going so far as to say that it was Britpop which helped the rise of Tony Blair and New Labour, which is complete bollocks since BP was pretty much over by the time he came in. From the outside looking in, it's very easy to say to people of my generation - people who never counted themselves as English, who grew up away from London, who were aware of the Beatles and the Kinks but didn't really listen to Britpop bands because they sounded like the Beatles and the Kinks, who enjoyed bands like Blur, Pulp, the Boo Radleys for their musical diversity, not their conservatism, who also liked American bands and dance music and hip-hop, who only felt 'a part of something' because we happened to be young and liked to go to indie nights and dance and snog each other in our Doc Martens as opposed to because of something Stuart Maconie said on the Evening Session - It's easy to look at the surface-level media-led shit that sprang up around the arse end of Britpop and turn around 20 years later and go 'HAH, see I told you it was all SHIT', when really I think that's rather inaccurate and missing much of the point and I'd more readily side on Eva Wiseman's little piece than Parkes's in-depth and well-written but ultimately unfair drubbing.

I thought it was very poorly written. F-word this and F-word that; fine, you can swear as much as the average Gallagher brother. So what? Does that make you better than them? Also, far too discursive and rambling instead of addressing the topic at hand and a competent editor would not have spared their secateurs cutting the piece down. Funny how he has a go at “Girls And Boys” supposedly attacking the working class and as usual gives Pulp the free pass. Not listened to the first song on His N’ Hers recently, then?

Meanwhile, did the death of Diana really “kill” Britpop? If anything spelled out the end it must ARGUABLY have been the advent of the Spice Girls. Look! Colour, fun, humour – everything that Britpop isn’t (any more). No mention of them. Riot Grrl gets one passing, rather disdainful mention. If Elastica did anything he doesn’t mention it. And of all the Britpop loudmouths to alight upon, he decides to have a go at…Louise Wener.

The differential diagnosis would therefore include the possibility that this writer has a problem with women.

Oh, and as far as Blair and Blairism are concerned, the Britpop boom essentially happened under a Conservative government.

You mean the Iraq War wasn't ignited by Blur's version of 'Lets Go Down the Strand', what are you saying here Marcello?

Not the Spice Girls, really.

My opinion being: The Spiceys could co-exist with the Britpop quite happily. One alternate 'DOBP' theory was Louise Wener, funnily enough, was in the studio doing her third album and getting a preview of Robbie's "Angels" and realising that the Mainstream could actually do this "Britpop anthem" thing better than Oasis now, so time to pack up and prepare for the taxi home. (I believe the Glitter Band had the same feeling when they saw the Sex Pistols live, back in 1976).

My theory of the end was when Blur produced "Tender", a sure-fire number one, only Britney Spears stopped them with "one more time, baby" and it was like the end of "1066 and all that" : "America was clearly top nation, and Britpop came to a full stop"

Cheers, chief.

Good theories there. I'm sure Robson and Jerome are thoroughly fed up with having to take all the blame.

even going so far as to say that it was Britpop which helped the rise of Tony Blair and New Labour, which is complete bollocks since BP was pretty much over by the time he came in.

Blairism didn't start the day he won the election you know. In fact his period as leader of the opposition (July 1994 to May 1997) is almost exactly the lifespan of Britpop, and that's when he axed Clause IV, launched New Labour, etc. You can't complain about TP's false assumptions if you're making some of your own.

Marcello is more on-point. It is rambling, and at times unclear what he even means by "Britpop" (which, like "hipster", now appears to mean Things The Writer Doesn't Like) and TP's problem with women has been noted before. I still think it's one of the better anti-Britpop rants I've read recently, if only because it's pegged to analysis of a specific album.

a bunch of what's being addressed here would probably more reasonably thought of within the sphere of "Cool Britannia" - an overlapping but not absolutely equivalent set of vectors to Britpop

and i think there is a problem when addressing Britpop in treating it as the sum of a bunch of records/artists rather than a media/social construction with a complex relationship to those artists

Warming up to the subject...

My brother-in-law had bought one of those "civilisation" type computer games. He installed it, and began with a small community.

Over whatever time period, he grew them and nurtured them, created huts and expanded into other areas. After some time, he felt he was doing quite well, with a small sailing fleet of wooden boats for fishing and such like. Then, suddenly, a big grey battleship came into the harbour and invaded. At which point, he said "Ah, maybe I wasn't doing quite as well as I thought!"

Britpop as one of those sixth tier nations in a game of Civ who keep trying to demand tribute from clearly more powerful teams is a quality analogy

I was listening to the Forgotten ’90s show on Absolute Radio ‘90s last night. The DJ played “On A Rope” by Rocket from the Crypt and exclaimed disbelief that such an “alternative” record could go to #12 in the charts. “That probably won’t happen ever again,” he sighed slowly.

The way I viewed Britpop at the time was as a useful conduit for lots of “outsider” music – of whatever genre or nationality – to get through to the mainstream. Opening the floodgates and so forth. As usual with these things, it happened for a bit and then hubris and complacency set in. I queued up outside Denmark Hill Safeway’s at 8:00 on Thursday morning for Be Here Now just like so many other people, so I’m as much to blame as anybody.

Ah, I drove specially to Richmond HMV for mine. HMV purchasers got a 'special' 1st day of issue certificate........

But trying to distil Britpop into a Robbie Williams song is kind of also a glancing-off of the point of it in a way, because that's what people remember about Britpop - legions of rugger buggers singing 'Angels' as they swill back Carling on Christmas Eve 1997, Noel Gallagher shaking hands with new PM Tony Blair at his new digs while Liam flips Vs at the tabloids, Alex James eating cheese and Damon gobbling Prozac - and that's not what it was all about for me - all of these things happened after the fact.
And it didn't have anything to do with the Spice Girls or Diana or any of that - those things existed, but enjoying the music of Blur as a fifteen year old had little to do with it. I didn't suddenly stop listening to the bands I liked and switched over to Robbie and the Spice Girls. Britpop didn't die, it moved on like all genres do. By 1997 I had finished my GCSEs and was listening to OK Computer - arguably a more socially involved and musically adventurous album by the majority of Britpop's standards (although I'd say Blur at their height had their own brand of social commentary, not to mention 'musicality').
'Britpop' on one hand was a cynical media construct that lasted less than 3 years. On the other, it's a continuum representing British alternative-based pop and rock which for better or worse has existed since at least the mid-80s and continues to exist today in some shape or form. I would rather appreciate it for the 'pop' part rather than the 'Brit' part, which is ultimately a projection on behalf of the onlookers and those who could only observe it form the vantage point of the tabloid press well after its mid-90s peak.

Surely On A Rope being a hit has more to do with Nirvana et al opening the door to the mainstream for US alt rock? The Yanks Go Home triumphalism has created a narrative where it's as if people stopped listening to US music, but of course people listened to both Britpop and indie-rock/grunge/alt, and the press continued to support the latter.
That's not to say that Britpop didn't serve as a gateway to 'outsider' music for a lot of people, especially those getting into music around then. I suppose I have Britpop, and the music press of the time, introducing me to Syd Barrett, Wire etc.

Radiohead conspicuously absent from any of these Britpop commemorations but then I don't suppose they were ever really Britpop. Britrock or Brit art rock yes, but Britpop?

Never wore a union jack is why. Not even ironically.

xpost to my own xpost - that was several xposts - i'm at work. hey dog

some ppl just don't like cute boys playing guitars, just like I don't give a shit about interchangeable 17-year-old models being autotuned.

'On a Rope' was released on three CDs at 99p each, was never sure how much that contributed to it being a hit - I know I bought all three and so did a few of my friends, there were some pretty good b-sides on there iirc (xposts).

You're right about the continuum of British alternative-based pop and rock Dog Latin, but there is a lot of resentment from the Maker writers that Britpop, in its most commercial and conservative forms, seemed to kill off the more interesting, progressive elements of that? But then was British post-rock ever going to be a serious commercial proposition? It's certainly true that Britpop has created a conservative and dominant narrative of Great British Guitar Music, and that's led to a narrowing of horizons in certain quarters. On the other hand, the internet has allowed the more interesting stuff to gain a wider audience, even if it rarely crosses over to the mainstream.

Also, RFTC - catchy tune and a great look, so of course they were on the Chart Show etc.

The resentment from the Maker writers was that romo never took off.

Blairism didn't start the day he won the election you know. In fact his period as leader of the opposition (July 1994 to May 1997) is almost exactly the lifespan of Britpop, and that's when he axed Clause IV, launched New Labour, etc. You can't complain about TP's false assumptions if you're making some of your own.

Fine, but it's still a major leap to blame the Britpop-era bands for Blairism. For a start the average fifteen year old 'indie'-kid prob was pretty fuzzy about Tony Blair's policies as the opposition leader. Come the election I think we were just happy to finally have the Tories out, but politics came later. Obviously it's not just about what the fans thought, but it's still a stretch to blame all this on Britpop. Blur were, in maybe a rather superficial story-telling way, much more critical of Britain and British life than proselytisers of it.

Stew - flick through a copy of Select in 1995 and there was a LOT more coverage of the music scene as a whole than just Oasis et al. They had excellent and very prominent dance music coverage near the front of the mag each month for example, a three-page Spice Girls feature, decent coverage of the US. By the time of their demise in the late 90s though they'd become exactly a caricature of a Britpop mag - think Oasis must have appeared on the cover at least three times in 98/99. The humour had been flushed out too.

Don't think he's 'blaming' Britpop for Blairism, he's just contextualising it. TP does acknowledge that Blur were probably just having a bit of fun with their mockney antics and didn't realise they'd helped create a monster. I think Damon Albarn's recent interviews where he talks about growing up in multi-cultural east London, while a bit too late, at least show an attempt to move away from a white English stereotype.
The flag waving triumphalism of Britpop and Cool Britannia masked a deep anxiety about national identity that comes with loss of Empire, the destruction of society and industry by Thatcher etc. Britpop could have contributed to a much more progressive and pluralistic idea of what England and Britain could be, but it fell back on stereotypes and conservative nostalgia.

xposts, I agree with those upthread saying that Britpop in many ways was a conduit for more alternative music to gain relatively mainstream acceptance, as such the musical conservatism people associate with it is a bit off. Oasis were a very conservative-sounding band, but is it fair to say that about all the music being listened to by the average alt/indie kid in 1995?

Dog Latin - you're quite right. I started reading Select in 1994 and it was full of dance music, American stuff, chart pop etc. A great eye-opener for a 14 year old who'd only recently started listening to new music after exhausting my parents' Beatles and Stones albums. Once Andrew Harrison left as editor it was downhill all the way. It's testament to his editorship that they had the confidence to cover a range of things in a fun way. Once it lost that energy and humour it clung onto the arse end of Britpop of Britpop, hoping that would see them through. But as TP points out about the press more broadly, perhaps the problem was that the writing wasn't engaging enough any more?

who enjoyed bands like Blur, Pulp, the Boo Radleys for their musical diversity, not their conservatism, who also liked American bands and dance music and hip-hop, who only felt 'a part of something' because we happened to be young and liked to go to indie nights and dance and snog each other in our Doc Martens as opposed to because of something Stuart Maconie said on the Evening Session

This is bang OTM and its a fact that a lot of these anti-Britpop screeds gloss over. White, middle class men werent ruined by Britpop's conservatism like TP insists. Thats a load of bull. There was plenty of dance, rap and American rock I was open to in 1995 (I was 18)...along with lots of different old stuff (Krautrock, Sabbath, Miles Davis, Scott Walker, Beach Boys).

I do agree with TP about Damon Albarn's heavy-handed caricatures though. It was always something that turned me off about Blur.

The flag waving triumphalism of Britpop and Cool Britannia masked a deep anxiety about national identity that comes with loss of Empire, the destruction of society and industry by Thatcher etc. Britpop could have contributed to a much more progressive and pluralistic idea of what England and Britain could be, but it fell back on stereotypes and conservative nostalgia.

This is true - also death of grunge/post-grunge tawdriness coupled with well-intentioned anti-consumerism in the guise of Americophobia in some cases. In a way Britpop could be seen as less about pro-Britishness than a sort-of inter-continental rivalry between the UK and US. But it was indeed the Spice Girls who waved their flags the hardest.

By the time of their demise in the late 90s though they'd become exactly a caricature of a Britpop mag -

I dunno, I was gutted that Select closed, it was pretty great even then, and they'd started to do free CDs that were actually worth keeping..

I remember comparing the compleat Radiohead feature they did in 1999 to the Blur one they did circa '95 and there was no competition in terms of writing-style and incite.

Britpop certainly changed the music press... as did the coverage of music in the mainstream media, as TP points out. The need to find a new Britpop led the music press to overlook a lot of interesting stuff that didn't fit a simple narrative, hence that self-parodic period when they championed non-existant new scenes like skunk rock and stool rock. For me the lack of good British guitar bands after Britpop led me to Beck, Beasties then hip-hop and funk. Britpop was for many the beginning of a love affair with music that led them down myriad paths. TP's beef seems to be with those who never really moved on and still treat it as the greatest youth movement ever, or at least will it to be the equal of punk, Beatlemania etc. That's fair enough, but then those people always dominate the histories. Not that I'm accepting that, but we can fight it by writing new histories.

they championed non-existant new scenes

always the case even before britpop

This is true of course, but I think it got particularly desperate by the late '90s.

But as TP points out about the press more broadly, perhaps the problem was that the writing wasn't engaging enough any more?

I would say this, obviously, but I don't think there was a massive difference in the quality of the features or reviews at Select. To me it felt more down to a loss of energy and conviction during the post-Britpop fallout and, by the end, worthy cover stars. I've seen magazines go through good and bad phases with roughly the same stable of writers. The difference is down to vision, sense of purpose and overall editorial voice. Andrew Harrison had all of those qualities. He also had a music scene that was exploding and a knack for celebrating it (and by it I include dance music, etc, not just Britpop) without fawning.

The weeklies changed more dramatically because they were more argumentative in the late 80s/early 90s so once they became cheerleaders they lost something vital that they never got back.

lol at TP having a beef with "those who never really moved on". Like some other ex-MM writers he's still reenacting office battles from 20 years ago.

Re: Oasis, I'm currently reading Alex Niven's 33 1/3 book on Definitely Maybe and he makes a strong case that the first album was less sonically conservative than current received wisdom suggests.

well it does have a shoegazery whirl of sound thing going on. i listened to it there recently and the production really works on it.

I always thought that about Def MayB, that it represented shoegaze coming out of murk and into melody, but when I first heard that album I knew nothing about the band and had no Gallagher stereotypes in my head. The conservatism came later

love this: 'shoegaze coming out of murk and into melody' - also the Verve I guess?

There are also strands of glam, psychedelia, baggy, hip hop and the Sex Pistols. It doesn't by any stretch of the imagination just sound like the Beatles. Critics might have lost their minds by the time of Be Here Now but I remember why they were so excited about the debut and it wasn't because they thought it was throwback meat-and-potatoes rock.

OTM, there wasn't that much 'real guitars made of real wood' thing AFAIR in the earlier Britpop days. Maybe a lot of that came out as some sort of grumpy backlash to drum'n'bass and 'album dance' in the mid-90s mingling with some old 'that's not REAL' moaning from Noel.

It's sort of forgotten now that Noel was bang into Public Enemy, asked the Prodigy and Chemical Brothers to support Oasis at Knebworth and even made a (horrible) record with Goldie. One of my favourite side-effects of Britpop was Setting Sun becoming the noisiest number one since god knows when.

Writing about Britpop becomes much easier if you ignore all the freak hits and outliers and genre hybrids and women and class-consciousness and so on, and pretend it was all like Three Lions and the theme music to TFI Friday.

Boom, yeah that's it. I was going to mention Knebworth actually - the Prodge and Chems were the reason a lot of people I knew went, and prob why I would have gone had I not been on holiday.

is it true the Robson and Jerome record didn't even exist until people started asking for it in shops? that's what i've heard; the idea supposedly came about as a result of old ladies going into HMV and enquiring about 'that soldier song' which had been on the Soldier Soldier TV show in some karaoke scene or some such. apocryphal bollocks perhaps.

and then the shopkeeper said to the old lady 'We've got that record you asked about now' and the old ladies said 'Ooh, did I? I must have done...'

and so 4th

I thought the old lady said "oooh you are awful... but I like it"