Chapter 03 — Rhythms
Britpop
90s
In the early nineties a handful of British bands stopped looking at Seattle and started looking backwards: the Kinks, the Beatles, glam, television comedy. Out came songs about supermarkets, unpaid rent and holidays on the coast, sung in an accent nobody bothered to hide. In August 1995 Blur and Oasis released singles on the same day and the whole country picked a side as if it were an election. Our thesis: Britpop was as much a press campaign as a genre, and that takes nothing away from it. Under the noise there remain «Common People», «Live Forever» and an idea that sounds strange today: that the place you live in is worth singing about.
Key exponents
Blur
1993–1997
Damon Albarn painting portraits of the English middle class over a funfair synth.
Oasis
1994–1997
Two brothers from Manchester fighting in public and writing anthems in between.
Pulp
1994–1998
Jarvis Cocker had waited fifteen years; when his turn came, he wrote «Common People».
Suede
1992–1996
They got there before everyone else, with glam, ambiguity and suburban London.
Keep rewinding
00s
britpop
Stereophonics
Sacked just before the only number one
Stuart Cable, drummer and co-founder, was sacked in September 2003 for a lack of commitment: "Dakota", the band's only singles No. 1 in the United Kingdom, was recorded in 2005 without him, with Javier Weyler on drums. He died on 7 June 2010, aged 40, choked on his own vomit from acute alcohol poisoning.
90s
britpop
Pulp
Sixteen years of overnight success
It took them sixteen years to become an overnight success, and they wrote the sharpest anthem ever written about social class. When the spotlight found them, they had plenty to say.
90s
britpop
Damon Albarn
He never stood still
He had one of Britain's biggest bands in his hands and, instead of milking it, he went off to invent a cartoon band, then an opera in Mandarin, then records made in the heart of Africa. He is not driven by a style: he is driven by curiosity.
90s
britpop
Blur
The war that wasn't worth winning
They went down as «the other band», the one that lost to Oasis. It is an injustice: of the two rivals, Blur was the restless one, the one that burned its own winning formula instead of clinging to it. And that is why their music aged better.
90s
britpop
The Verve
Twenty-two years unable to say it
They wrote a song about how bittersweet life is, and that song became the most bittersweet story of their own lives. Richard Ashcroft wrote every word and every melody of «Bitter Sweet Symphony», and for twenty-two years the world believed someone else had.
90s
britpop
Oasis
The guns fell silent
Two brothers from a working-class Manchester suburb feuded for fifteen years and wrote some of the greatest anthems in rock. It is Cain and Abel in parkas, with one enormous difference: this time the story ended in reconciliation, not tragedy.
90s
britpop
Suede
The best before they played
Melody Maker called them the best new band in Britain on its cover before they had released a single. And it turned out the hype was right.