Britpop : Time For Reevaluation?

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"

or was that damon albarn?

dog latin OTM throughout the discussion so far!

"the most disastrous misunderstanding of The Beatles since Charles Manson."

^ my fave description of oasis ever

One episode of Soldier Soldier called for the duo to sing "Unchained Melody".[4] Subsequently ITV was inundated by people looking to buy the song, and the pair were persuaded by Simon Cowell to release it as a single. Cowell enlisted music producers Mike Stock and Matt Aitken, with whom he had worked many times, to produce the single.

https://jeremygilbertwriting.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/white-noise-new-labour-new-lads-britpop-and-blairism/ interesting to read this contemporary article (late '96 / early '97) and see it highlight a lot of the things that some of the current coverage is suggesting only became visible in hindsight.

Back in the '90s, years prior to getting internet access (which I didn't until at some point in late 1997) and Napster (which didn't happen for another couple of years after that), I was getting my musical education from a small number of sources. My parents record collection was one, but in terms of discovering music, I was basically limited to a small number of sources: MTV Europe and VH-1 (on "old" analogue Sky), and BBC Radio.

I keep forgetting this myself sometimes, but CD's were ludicrously overpriced back in the '90s... if you were lucky, you could pick up a CD for something like £9.99, or if there was a sale on, take advantage of some kind of "2-for-1" or "3-for-2" offer that happened to be going on. But mostly, new albums and reissues by "classic" bands used to cost something ridiculous like £15.99. Being of the age I was at the time, there was no way on God's green Earth that I'd even think about buying an album with the limited pocket money that I had unless I was quite sure that I was going to like it. I would never buy an album, therefore, unless I'd heard 2 or 3 singles off it, which is where the likes of MTV Europe, VH-1 and BBC Radio helped. Later on, of course, I'd be able to use Napster, download a couple of tracks, and that would help decide whether I'd want to purchase the album or not. Spotify of course has made it even easier (and would have been a dream come true for me if it had existed in the '90s), but of course these are very different times now.

Because of the avenues I was using to discover music at this time, I find it really mind-boggling when I read retrospective pieces of this period, because while a lot of bands that would be (for worse, in my opinion) lumped together under the name of 'Britpop' were getting plenty of airplay; MTV Europe, VH-1 and yes, even BBC Radio weren't just mining, or existing in, some kind of strange 'Blur vs. Oasis' vacuum. Both MTV Europe and VH-1 used to play a lot of chart stuff on one hand (of which 'Britpop', or whatever you want to call it, was included), but the pre-digital MTV Europe also used to play foreign language music, there was still a bit of a grunge hangover and have shows dedicated to stuff which was happening apart from the UK/European charts. It had shows dedicated to hip-hop, rap and non-chart oriented stuff also. VH-1 was still very young in the UK at this time (I think it only launched in 1994 here) and continued to play a lot of "older" music... '60s/'70s/'80s stuff, and Tommy Vance had his own show on there dedicated to classic rock (for example). I was of the right age to soak it all up, and soak it all up I did, and a huge part of my musical education came from those times. When I finally got Napster, and Spotify, I'd made a mental note of everything I wanted to check out further, and went on a phase of "further exploration", should I say.

I'll make no bones about it, I enjoyed the '90s for numerous reasons. Some of the music from that time still stands up, and some of it doesn't. What I will say is this though: getting into Blur and 1994-1996 Oasis gave the young me a catalyst to find music for myself that wasn't part of my parents record collection. It set me off on a voyage of musical discovery, and while I may not listen to early Oasis very much by choice now, they definitely served their purpose. Looking back, it could have been any band that set me off on the path that led me to eventually find myself here, but that's how it turned out. I don't regret a thing, and as a result I'll always look back on that time fondly. It wasn't the only thing going on, but I'll very seldom have much bad to say about Britpop, apart from what it eventually turned into. But, by the time that Be Here Now was released, I was already moving on anyway, as I suspect many people were.

we never heard recorded music until 2003, we used to entertain ourselves by banging tin cans together and singing made-up tunes to the writing on the back of oven chip packets. we was poor but it was real.

By the way, it really gets my goat when, during discussion of 'Britpop', some smartarse always comes out and says "yeah, but you only rate those times because of nostalgia". Well, duh. I'm not exactly trapped in some '90s timewarp, and continue to enjoy new music as well as old, but if I want to put on Blur's Parklife, and it just so happens to remind me of some very pleasant moments in the past, then I'm perfectly entitled to do that. As does everyone who has their "own" music that soundtracked their lives at a particular age. I don't find anything particularly wrong with this. Was music "better" then? No. As everybody on here will no doubt be aware, there is good music and bad music released every year. I'd be the last person to say that Britpop was a "movement"/"scene"/"(whatever)" that outshone everything that has come along since; that would be absolutely ludicrous. Did it mean a lot for me at the time, though? Yes. And do some of those releases continue to be important to me for personal reasons? Yes.

and TP's problem with women has been noted before.

what is this, dl?

on Sundays tho dad would let us listen to the Home Service on the crystal set, we used to gather round and here Tony Blair making a speech about the Third Way and the need for a modern democratic socialism that better represented the aspirations of the Bluetones roadie on the street