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This week's subject: Britpop
The case for the prosecution ( )
As a grunge kid whose world was turned upside down by Nirvana (of which more in a few weeks), I was instinctively antipathetic towards Britpop. At the time, it seemed like a straight either / or choice.
Looking back, my reaction was kneejerk, and over time I’ve come to appreciate the considerable merits of Pulp and Definitely Maybe – but that general dislike has never really dulled.
From fertile beginnings and after a brief flowering, every music “movement” withers, though generally not before sending forth some poisonous shoots. Undoubtedly, grunge threw up some very average bands: Alice In Chains and Silverchair, for a start.
But Britpop elevated far more than its fair share of toss to grossly undeserved prominence. It’s right and proper that the charge sheet should list some of them: Geneva, Echobelly, The Bluetones, Cast, Menswe@r, Sleeper, Northside, Ocean Colour Scene. Musically spineless, lyrically pointless and will-to-live-sappingly shit the lot of them.
It was the music press who promoted these bands way beyond their talents. To a large extent Britpop was a media construction, perhaps more so than most music movements; certainly, the Oasis v Blur rivalry was cynically manufactured and then fuelled to increase sales of NME. A number of stylistically disparate groups were bundled together and marketed as “Britpop”, even though they were rarely representative of anything beyond the Good Mixer pub in Camden and bits of Manchester, or of anything other than white, conservative youth culture.
Not that the bands didn’t invite or even actively promote this impression of themselves. Britpop was a jingoistic response to grunge, the direct consequence of noses having been put out of joint by the plaid-shirted American oiks who had had the temerity to invade Britain via MTV and the airwaves. Oasis and Blur were not alone in revisiting their British (by which I mean English…) roots for “inspiration”.
The back catalogues of The Beatles, The Kinks and The Jam were all duly exhumed and plundered.
Blur’s Parklife remains a glibly offensive appropriation of British (by which I mean English…) working-class culture, while, only a few years after , Noel Gallagher had a guitar emblazoned with a Union Jack and Liam and Patsy snuggled up under a Union Jack duvet on the cover of Vanity Fair, either ignorant of or unconcerned by the flag’s racist associations. Meanwhile, British grunge copyists like Bush were lambasted not merely for not being very good but for being unpatriotic in daring to draw inspiration from across the Atlantic.
My feeling that it was an either / or choice wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.
And then there was Britpop’s association with another phenomenon of the mid 90s, one which unfortunately remains with us today: New Laddism. The brothers Gallagher embodied the beery brainlessness and sexism of newly-founded lads’ mags like Loaded, but it was Blur – supposedly the cultured, intelligent alternative – who were responsible for Britpop’s absolute nadir, which appropriately enough came at its supposed peak.
‘Country House’ was itself utter drivel, but the video, , was infinitely worse. They claimed it was “ironic”. Bollocks.
And last but not least, may I point to the cosy collusion with New Labour, whose media-savvy leadership understood that image was all and that Britpop could be harnessed in their rebranding as a means of appealing to young voters and fuelling the “Cool Britannia” myth. When , I was only defending their right to do so; Noel Gallagher may have been too stupid to realise he was being used, but he was perfectly happy to dabble, extolling Blair’s virtues at every opportunity.
By the time Oasis released the bloated egofest Be Here Now, in August 1997, New Labour had swept to power, and .
Radiohead, who had sounded a jarring note during Britpop’s halcyon days with The Bends, saw through it all; their third album, released that June, contained the barbed commentary of ‘Electioneering’. Blur, meanwhile, had moved on. The wily Albarn has always been sensitive to cultural seachange, and less than two years after vigorously asserting and accentuating their Britishness, they had produced a self-titled album heavily influenced by American alternative rock and were busy proclaiming Pavement their favourite band.
Britpop was dead. Good riddance.
The case for the defence ( )
So there I was, minding my own business, shooting the breeze (a pointless pastime, admittedly, but a guy's gotta have a hobby) when in blew the ill wind of an email reminder from Ben to say I had to provide a 750-word defence of Britpop by yesterday.
This is how life starts to crumble like an arthritic spine - give a guy greying temples and he begins to resemble J Jonah Jameson already. Well, close..
. but no cigar, obviously.
My first instinct was to use the cop-out clause of just admitting hands-down that Britpop was inherently INDEFENSIBLE.
Would've spoilt all your fun, for sure, but at least it would mean Dead Kenny'd spend the weekend chasing what the weekend's for - beer, women, and precious Premiership points for West Ham. But never let it be said that your correspondent has commitment problems, so following on from some intense internal dialogue, a compromise was brokered where the defence would be presented in some kind of approximation of stream-of-consciousness (uh-oh..
.) in place of the usual(?) serious and reasoned debate.
Let's get ready to ramble, then.
First, the historical context. In March 2004, Oasis released their debut single 'Supersonic'.
In April 2004 Kurt Cobain took a shotgun to his head. Coincidence? Possibly, if you listen to conspiracy theories and Sonic Youth too much.
But just as punk was needed to wipe away the prog-rock cobwebs, Britpop simply had to happen to rid us of mopey Americans with personal hygiene issues who struggled so much to get laid that they were driven to scream "RAPE ME" in their lyrics (to which the only reasonable response was "not until you have a damn good shower, sunshine"). OK, Nirvana had their moments but their threatened afterlife of Bush, Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots was a fate worse than Def Leppard and it had to be crushed. The sneering glam stomp of 'Cigarettes And Alcohol' and life-affirming splendour of 'Live Forever' need to be heard within this perspective to be fully appreciated.
Next, the "definition of the genre to best suit my arguments" bit. My Britpop definition is anything that was British and Popular between 1994 and 1997, the timespan between the releases of 'Supersonic' and Oasis' third album Be Here Now. To clarify, The Prodigy are included, Kaiser Chiefs are not.
Next, the bit where we undercut the complaint that genre debate falls down when the identification of anything remotely good within it is used to validate a type of music that is otherwise inexcusable. In order to perform this conjuror's trick Dead Kenny will take a few from the top, take a few from the bottom and poke around a bit in the middle area until we get some joy.
So we'll cast to one side the top layer of undisputable greats from the time - Tricky's masterful and troubled Maxinquaye; the classic Oasis debut Definitely Maybe; Radiohead's The Bends and PJ Harvey slinking about on the Glastonbury stage in a skin-tight red catsuit.
We'll also squeeze out the stinkiest of the irreducible, unredeemable shite - Ocean Colour Scene; Menswear; Weller's solo stuff; Fatboy Slim (his music's ageing worse than his clueless wife).
What we're left with then, are just our inbetweeners, giving us a reasonable impression of the real pulse behind a "genre" to compare with other times and styles. And the more you think about the Britpop era, the more you can't help but be struck by the sheer range covered - the art-school pop of Pulp; post-punk stylings of Elastica and cheerful melodic suss of Supergrass rubbing shoulders with the lush electronic thrum of Orbital; epic soundtrack material by Underworld and The Prodigy's bonkers electro ravings.
Even old shoegazers like Lush found some Top 40 action in the Britpop boom, Ealing in the years with the spiky 'Ladykillers'.
Oddballs like Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon were embraced into the mainstream in a way we hadn't seen since punk.
Multi-culturalism started to make itself felt with the emergence of Sonya Aurora Madan-led Echobelly; Cornershop and Asian Dub Foundation.
Girl singers were not just glamorous but they gave good copy as well - Sonya Aurora Madan again, as well as entertaining rentagobs like Shirley Manson and Louise Wener.
Derided by ultra-solemn rock snobs they may be, but concerts by the likes of Shed 7 and Sleeper supplied your correspondent with some of the best nights of his life. Shed 7's 'On Standby' contains one of the great intros of all time.
Sleeper's 'Delicious' appears to be in praise of cum. Louise Wener made sleeping with your drummer fashionable long before Jack White.
TFI Friday may have been hosted by Chris Evans but how many great bands got to play live on mainstream TV at 6pm either before or since?
It's impossible to listen to 'Alright' by Supergrass without gagging on glee.
Lamb's 'Gorecki' displays arguably the best synthesis of beats and strings known to civilisation. It was one of the greatest songs of the 90s, if not all time.
Marion and Geneva were about fifteen years behind their time. Which meant they were also about eight years ahead of their time.
A review of a Supergrass / Bluetones double-header got your hack his first local press review.
The Bluetones were described as having more harmonies, rhapsodies and melodies than a Captain Scarlet boxset.
Even rubbishy old Blur made a great tune eventually in 'Song 2'. Whoo-hoo, indeed.
Oh c'mon, Britpop was fun. The heaviness and darkness of the hangover since only highlights what a great fucken party it was at the time.
But then, Dead Kenny's just a git in front of the computer, just like you.
So maybe you need to search for the hero inside yourself for the answers. Your correspondent did this once, and just found lots of mucus, viscera, bones, muscle and a pumping, beating heart. Which was a conclusion in itself, although the surgeons afterwards weren't quite so philosophical (serious fellows, but they soon had me in stitches).
DON'T LOOK BACK IN ANGER! ACQUIT BRITPOP!
PS Will this do?
* * * * *
Thanks to Dead Kenny - his overlength contribution will be forgiven just this once, because he was up against me and I'm feeling unusually lenient, but woe betide anyone else who tries to pass off over 1,000 words as being 750 or less!
Now it's over to you. Guilty or innocent - YOU decide.
The comments box is open and awaiting your comments - you've got until Friday to make up your mind...
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