My Britpop
Musings on music that wasn't just Kinks parodies
My niece is fifteen and a fan of Oasis. She wasn’t a fan until last week when suddenly everyone became a fan. Truthfully, I wasn’t one until I realised actually, I quite these songs. This was a surprise, to be blunt. Maybe I fought too hard to hate something that wasn’t worth hating in the first place. You must understand that teen me liked the company of my bedroom walls, books, videos, and CDs more than he liked people. I had friends, they had Liam haircuts, but my allegiance was mostly to American alternative rock. When Britpop came, it hit with the force of God’s fist, totally shaking not only the charts, but culture. Here, not anywhere else. Britpop, as the name suggests, was an English concern. Scotland was swept up in the scene, but never truly part of it. How many classic Britpop bands emerged from Scotland? We had Britpop bands at school, but it felt very cosplay to me. Even though I took against what I saw as the rampant caddishness of Britpop, that coke fuelled confidence I found totally off-putting, it was actually a brilliant moment for music too. Suddenly the charts were full of guitar bands. Not all of them great, but they were there, and something about that felt comforting to me.
My Britpop was a bit more wide-ranging that just The Gallaghers. Immediately, ardently, I embraced Dubstar, Elastica, Sleeper, Blur, Pulp, Lush, Kula Shaker, Mansun, Salad, Saint Etienne, Echobelly, Divine Comedy, and Suede. Yet part of me still felt something for Oasis, because really…how can anyone deny the anthemic power of something like Live Forever, Wonderwall, and Acquiesce? As much as I defined myself by what I loved, maybe I spent too long defining I was by what I hated, which is never a good thing because you become one of those tedious reactionary bores who constantly patrol what other people are listening to, which itself is problematic. God, I was insufferable. In hindsight, maybe I was a fan of Oasis after all. I certainly loved their interviews. Not everything they did landed with me. Wishing Damon would die of AIDS certainly felt coded in a way that I immediately understood, the context of it being very obvious. Then again, I was so in love with outrage and shock that when Noel declared that Oasis were bigger than God, I rolled my eyes.
There were other bands that I call Britpop adjacent. Not fully in the genre, stylistically, yet they always make me think of that period of time. Honourary Britpop, perhaps? Bands like The Cardigans, The Wannadies, Garbage, Shampoo, Kenickie, My Vitriol, Ash, Placebo, Republica, Huggy Bear, Morcheeba, Tricky, Portishead, The Chemical Brothers, and Radiohead. Triphop felt like a natural addition to the scene, the classy loops, downtempo beats, unhappy guitar riffs, and jazzy mood fitting perfectly with my disposition after hours of listening to English songwriters dismantling the English social condition. The other bands were punk infused, their take on Britpop far more acerbic, both in lyrical content and sound. Dance groups around at the time thought nothing of getting Noel or Liam to sing on their tracks. In the case of Unkle, they had Ian Brown on top of their beats. It all felt connected to me. A proper scene should feel connected. There were rivalries, battles, and ego wars, but all those CDs on my shelf belong together, even if the music is miles apart stylistically. My friend last year considered getting tickets to see Kula Shaker. Oh goodness yes, I told him, let’s go! He didn’t get the tickets, but I’m starting to realise I’ve fully re-entered my Britpop era for the first time, enjoying it a bit more now than I did when it actually happened. Age means forgetting the parts you weren’t keen on and appreciating the good things about a time that wasn’t necessarily enjoyable. Though that period was personally one of the darkest and most horrible I’ve endured, the impact still felt even now, the music was always there for me, just like the bands. I can’t promise I’ll be a complete Oasis convert. The jingoistic aspects of Britpop bothered me, the way everyone wanted the Union Jack on their clothes, everyone but myself, who voted for Scottish independence, but I always appreciated the power of Britpop, the iconoclastic moments. When do we see BBC News reporting on two bands battling to get to number one in the charts? Will we ever see that again? Please, let’s see it again. I want to see violence and carnage in quotation marks.
From the list of bands I’ve put together from my own CD rack, you’ll notice many of the bands are led by (or prominently feature) women. Even from the safe distance of television or magazine, the scene felt very laddish. Yet some of the best music in Britpop came from women. It seems gloriously perverse to me that in a genre dominated by men, I prefer the contribution of women . I make no apologies. Sale of the Century is as smart and funny as anything Pulp released. Elastica looked better than Oasis in black and white photography. Shampoo had more attitude than Rick Witter. Dubstar and Saint Etienne sounded like my fantasy life. This week, I’ve listened to Oasis and enjoyed the songs, maybe for the first time because I’m letting myself embrace them for who they are, rather than what they represented to me as a gloomy, disconnected teenager. This has reopened the doors to all the bands I loved, some of whom never left my side. My Britpop is expansive and varied and sometimes in opposition to the other bands in close proximity, yet somehow it makes sense to me. It isn’t defined by lists, but by my own scattered magpie eye. Ultimately, I think my playlist is a subconscious effort to recreate what I used to see on The Box or MTV back in the ’90s. That’s how I associate the scene, where all the varied bands who aren’t Britpop somehow make their way into my ears. That’s why Britpop, despite the complicated reputation, had more to it than the same five bands we see in every default Britpop playlist. Now, my own playlist feel a lot bigger. This isn’t nostalgia, just an understanding that sometimes we grow out of music, when we should get closer to it. Britpop often felt like a club I couldn’t join, when actually, I got in through the side door thanks to the other bands, the ones that were a little bit different. My Britpop bands might not share a bill, but they’ve got a place on my playlist, and it’s all peaceful until I turn up the volume.
Kirkland Ciccone
90s, britain, britpop, Indie, Melody Maker, NME, Oasis, Pop music, rock
