Seeing as my baggy anthems piece seems to have gone down well, here's another selection of 90s period gems in celebration of Blur's Hyde Park show this weekend as part of the Olympics closing festivities. Apparently the official end ceremony is going to wheel the Spice Girls out of retirement which sounds like quite an ordeal so let's count our blessings that some of the nation's true talent is on show to set the balance right.
The Britpop years coincided with my own adolescence and looking back it was a pretty great era for music in the UK where you could go out any time and see a cracking new band pretty much anywhere in the country in a climate where British bands were suddenly seen as a serious investment by record companies and the charts were duly flooded with new releases by bands who would have passed under the commercial radar only a couple of years earlier. It wouldn't last forever of course and the movement collapsed towards the end of the decade into a pompous, decadent mess leaving us with several years of tedious nice guy indie before the Strokes came to the rescue in the early noughties. That shouldn't undermine the power and influence of what was nevertheless a great period of British music in the mid 1990s and the anthems from the era still sound great today. Here's ten to get you going.
Suede - Animal Nitrate (February 1993)
Not strictly speaking a Britpop single (or even a Britpop band), Suede's 'Animal Nitrate' nevertheless broke new ground as the first big release from a British band since Baggy's heyday at the start of the 1990s. Not since the Roses' 'One Love' had the record buying indie public been hankering after new material so keenly and the record didn't disappoint, crashing into the charts at #7 in early 1993 to fulfil Brett Anderson's dream of getting a record about sex and drugs into the British top ten. The fact that it charted higher than Nirvana's first new material since 'Nevermind' (in the shape of limited edition split 'Oh the Guilt' which fell short at #12) felt mildly symbolic at the time but in hindsight it wasn't the handing over of the torch moment that would signal the end of grunge and the ascent of Britpop. We'd have to wait another year for that before 'Parklife' and 'Definitely Maybe' would top the charts and make Stateside MTV rock distinctly uncool again. Suede had conquered the indie underground in 1992/93 but would ultimately remain a second string band in 1994/95 whilst the likes of Blur, Pulp and Supergrass cleaned up commercially, only returning to the fore in 1996 with their relentlessly commercial 'Coming Up' record that spawned five top ten hits but swapped Bernard Butler's sleazy guitar riffs for some pretty boy on keyboards and ultimately failed to recreate the swagger of their early material. They pre-dated the Britpop era and are often overlooked in retrospective studies of the 1990s but Suede have their place in any breakdown of the period's British music - doors were opened during their early days that would be blasted off their hinges soon afterwards by the more successful bands but they still laid the groundwork for much of what came later.
Blur - Girls and Boys (March 1994)
Fast forward a year from 'Animal Nitrate' and things change dramatically. Though Suede dominated the indie media of 1993, the big hits of the year still came from student union underachievers like Senser, Credit to the Nation and the Auteurs, worthy artists no doubt but not ones you could ever see troubling the top ten. Blur were the band to change all that - they'd been there already in 1991 with baggy pastiche 'There's no other way' but floundered with 1992's thrashy 'Popscene' and 1993's massively influential yet commercially understated 'Modern Life is Rubbish', still their only album to not yield them a top ten hit. The potential of that release would be fully realised on 1994's 'Parklife', honing their songwriting chops and tweaking their image to become the recognisable face of Britpop fashion. The promo clip for 'Girls and Boys' sets the template for mid 90s chic - tracksuit tops, skinny T-shirts, bright colours and Damon's pogo-pout dance style that would soon be widely imitated on indie dancefloors. The band's performance was projected over a series of lurid video clips of 18-30 holiday goers having it large and became the blueprint for their own subject matter over subsequent releases, the everyday side of British culture set to a soundtrack of widely accessible pop music. It crash into the charts at #5 in early 1994 and remains of one the era's most memorable hits, still capable of igniting dancefloors to this day and representing the point where Blur would enter the nation's consciousness on a permanent basis. Their art school take on UK popular culture may have alienated listeners more attuned to Oasis' celebratory terrace anthems but Blur's artistic imprint on the Britpop era is arguably the strongest of all.
Shed Seven - Dolphin (June 1994)
'If we're the Beatles then who's the Rolling Stones? Shed Seven? I don't fucking think so!'. Thus spake Noel Gallagher in 1994, cruelly summing up the second string status that Rick Witter and co would carry around with them throughout the Britpop era. They're less fondly remembered than many of their peers and remain more closely associated with the sweaty neanderthal image of late period Weller/Cast/OCS lad rock than the sprightly class of 1994 but let's not gloss over Shed Seven's contribution to Britpop as a whole. Noel's quote acts as a reminder that prior to his band's media sanctioned feud with Blur during the chart wars of 1995, Shed Seven were the closest thing Oasis had to a rival group. 'Dolphin' and equally catchy follow-up 'Speakeasy' charted alongside 'Supersonic' and 'Shakermaker' in the summer of 1994 and whilst Oasis went on to much greater success, Shed Seven matched their tally of hit singles albeit at lower positions and remain one of the 90s biggest chart successes. They timed their run perfectly, catching the wave of upward momentum in British indie with their first record in 1994 and firing out regular releases to keep them in the charts and on the radio without a break until the Britpop movement died down a few years later. 'Dolphin' was their breakthrough success and the video shows them clad in the period finery of ringer T-shirts and nouveau mod chic, although on the downside you also have to deal with the unsettling sight of Rick Witter's nipples. Oasis' emergence from the established musical stronghold on Manchester was billed as provincial England's riposte to the capital's industry domination but Shed Seven's ascent from the distinctly non rock 'n' roll backwater of York was a better example of how Britpop allowed bands to pop up from anywhere in the country and become overnight sensations on the back of one decent record. They may never have had the scope to go global but many a good night out was soundtracked by their music in the 1990s and Shed Seven have their place on any list of the Britpop era's biggest stars, both in sales terms and period significance.
Elastica - Connection (October 1994)
We all know no music trend is complete until the girls get involved. Elastica were mainstays on the London indie circuit in the mid 90s and blew up alongside Blur, Suede and Menswear as the capital's biggest success stories. Their erratic yet brilliant début single 'Stutter' landed in late 1993 and kickstarted a brief yet brilliant run of releases that saw their three subsequent singles all go top 20 before their self-titled début album hit #1 in March 1995. Then, brilliantly, there was absolutely nothing. They managed to cram everything into a particularly fertile period encompassing most of 1994 which they spent touring, partying and dominating the music press, providing Britpop with some much needed female pin-ups along the way. My favourite was always the bassist Annie, who I later learnt was a raging smackhead at the time. 'Connection' landed between 'Line Up' and 'Waking Up' as their third release and is arguably their poppiest moment, a two-minute burst of nonchalant indie tailor-made for dancefloors across the country and accompanied by a cartoonish video where each band member gets to pose off for the camera (I love the bit at the end where Donna stares out the camera whilst knocking out the closing riff, it just oozes cool). The girls (and guy) were just as visible in as Blur and Oasis back in '94 and their celebratory status was only enforced by lead singer Justine Frischmann's relationship with Damon Albarn, giving the media a positive British celebrity couple to rival the self destructive union of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love across the pond. Elastica's fame was brief but intense - like the Stone Roses before them, they crammed everything into an 18-month stint at the top before disappearing completely to preserve their charm, eventually resurfacing with a forgettable follow-up at the end of the decade by which time Britpop seemed like a distant memory. Their legacy should serve as a reminder to hopefuls that music isn't a career choice, it's a chance to mark the moment and their music remains the perfect soundtrack to the mid 90s as much as the Stone Roses and Nirvana were to the start of the decade.
Supergrass - Mansize Rooster (February 1995)
Critical praise is generally heaped on 'Modern Life is Rubbish', 'His 'n' Hers' and 'Definitely Maybe' as Britpop strongest albums but for my money Supergrass' bratty début 'I Should Coco' is the era's best LP. The lads were a younger, fresher take on Britpop when they emerged in mid 1994 with 'Caught by the Fuzz', a tale of teenage mischief gone awry that featured prominently in many 'best single of the year' lists, laying the foundations for a run of increasingly successful chart releases that saw them narrowly miss out on #1 on two occasions ('Alright' and 'Richard III' if you're interested). 'Mansize Rooster' was their first hit and remains one of their most sprightly numbers, showcasing their knack for matching pop elements (high-pitched vocals and a thumping piano riff) with their relentless power trio rock delivery - unlike many of their peers, these guys could really play. Their distinctive shaggy appearance and signature sound made them one of the era's most recognisable bands and they were perhaps the first example of Britpop bands getting famous straight out of high school, laying the foundations for the likes of Ash, Bis and Northern Uproar in the process. Everything about their early material is effervescent and deliriously catchy, taking in retro influences but re-processing them into a sound that came to characterise the mid 1990s. 'Alright' came to rank alongside 'Common People' and the 'Country House' / 'Roll with it' face-off as the soundtrack to Britpop's biggest summer in 1995 and they managed to maintain their profile as the era drew to a close on the late 90s with a string of memorable releases, only noticeably slowing down after the turn of the millennium. They carried on regardless though and remained a formidable live act until they eventually decided to call it quits a couple of years back but their rise coincided with Britpop's biggest sales period in 1995 and remains the perfect soundtrack to the golden era of 90s indie.
Pulp - Common People (June 1995)
If 1994 was Britpop's breakthrough year then 1995 was the year the mainstream had to take it seriously - bagging a couple of top ten hits and notching a Mercury nomination were enough to get you an industry pat on the back but it wasn't until 'Parklife' and 'Definitely Maybe' had finished amongst the year's top sellers that the likes of Simply Red and U2 started to feel threatened. Oasis illustrated the genre's commercial potential when 'Some Might Say', arguably one of their weaker singles, gave them their first UK #1 in April 1995 and set the tone for what would become the summer of Britpop, characterised by the August face-off between 'Roll with it' and 'Country House' as the genre dominated the national media. Both Blur and Oasis will readily admit that they've written better material than either of their singles that duked it out for chart supremacy and ultimately the song of the summer was nailed to the mast before their records even hit the shelves. 'Common People' had been knocking around as a Pulp live staple for a year or so and was finally released in June 1995 on the back of a large scale promotional campaign that saw it stall at #2 behind Robson and Jerome's insipid cover of 'Unchained Melody', a graceful defeat seeing as the latter track finished the year as 1995's biggest selling single. The track achieved what neither Blur, Oasis nor any of their rivals could manage in summing up the Britpop movement in one all-conquering anthem, an end of the night classic that became the genre's 'Stairway to Heaven' and stands head and shoulder above any other track from the era as its one universally adored classic. Jarvis Cocker's tale of class divisions and kitchen sink realism struck a chord with everyone and gave Britpop a new celebrity who was brighter and ballsier than the rest - unlike the gobby upstarts fleshing out the genre, Pulp had been ploughing away since the early 1980s and their eventual rise to fame was all the more satisfying as it came on the back of years of thankless labouring in the hinterland of British indie. Jarvis had been around the block enough to know that his turn in the spotlight had finally arrived and dealt with it with considerable aplomb, winning friends everywhere with his wit, poise and deft fashion sense and only picking fights when he had a genuine point to prove (Michael Jackson at the Brit awards for example). 'Common People' is brilliant in every way and remains the one track that encompasses Britpop's conquering of the national psyche. You can hear the crowd singing back every single word on this live version from Glastonbury '95 which only goes to prove how massive the track was at the time (I saw them bust it out in the less prestigious confines of the Leeds Heineken festival the same year to an equally enthusiastic crowd). Best single of the 90s? Probably.
Northern Uproar - From a Window (February 1996)
By the end of 1995, Britpop had entered the national psyche and broken through in commercial terms enough to rival the music industry's biggest sellers. A year previously the masses were still in the process of embracing Oasis as their band of choice but they finished the year with three massive hits and the ubiquitous 'Morning Glory' album under their belts as the country's biggest band. Whilst Blur and Pulp had broken through to daytime radio with their art school take on British popular culture, Oasis were the band that truly brought Britpop to the masses and converted numerous working class blokes who'd never bought a record before into die hard fans. Their legacy was the oft-derided second wave of Britpop generally referred to as 'lad rock', a more rough-edged take on the genre fabricated by blokes in checked shirts and trainers with less focus on androgynous pop and more on serious guitar music and Beatle-based plagiarism. Bands like Cast, Ocean Colour Scene and a resurgent Paul Weller embodied the genre's return to traditional roots, keeping the music simple and catchy with a heavy dose of blokey mod culture mixed in with plenty of lager and football, perhaps best characterised by the inescapable mega-hit 'Three Lions' that soundtracked England's chest-beating patriotism in the new 'Cool Britannia' era. The music was pretty awful on the whole but there were a few gems in there, one of which were Manchester's Northern Uproar who began 1996 as industry favourite for the next big thing. Adolescent, aggressive and anti-intellectual, they were a sure-fire sign that fashion had swung towards the populist and predictable rather than the innovative and intelligent but nevertheless came strapped with some great tunes. 'From a Window' was their first and biggest hit, crashing into the top 20 in early 1996 with a tale of dole mole misery and youthful exhuberance that matches the energy of early punk with the Beatles-indebted melody of the Britpop movement to dazzling effect. They looked like the sort of people that would have beaten up Jarvis Cocker on 'Mis-shapes' and gave Liam Gallagher a run in the stupidity stakes but were indisputable proof that Britpop was a nationwide phenomenon by '96 and one that excluded no-one. You didn't need to be a student or a music nerd to appreciate this stuff and though it perhaps signalled the beginning of the end for the Britpop era the advent of lad rock was a necessary step in the genre's global takeover.
Kenickie - Come out 2 nite (March 1996)
The success of lad rock alongside Loaded magazine, TFI Friday and the media interest surrounding Euro '96 had created a new target market for music, fashion and popular culture which was generally a step backwards rather than forwards, reverting to pre-PC macho attitudes and inarticulate bluster at the expense of thought-provoking social comment and art school chic. Not to be outdone by the guys, female celebrities attached themselves to the 'ladette' culture of the Girlie Show and the vapid press comments of the Spice Girls which merely re-appropriated the worst aspects of laddish culture without adding anything new from a female perspective. Kenickie were a diamond in the rough in that respect, the sole girl band to emerge from Britpop's second wave and pretty much the only group brainy enough to turn the kitchen sink realism of the era into something positive. 'Come out 2 nite' was their début single and it detailed a night out in their native Sunderland in lurid detail whilst remaining reassuringly witty ('She drank all that we had/and she threw up and I was glad'), making something really quite special out of tales of drinking cider in the park and copping off with blokes at the bus stop. Kenickie emerged alongside Bis, Tiger and Baby Bird in 1996 as part of what was more a backlash against Britpop than an integral part of the movement, a return to DIY Peel Session indie in contrast to the stadium anthems being pedalled by Oasis and co at the time and their underground success was perhaps an indication that indie's heartland was already getting turned off by Britpop's runaway success. The track failed to chart but was voted #1 in John Peel's Festive Fifty for 1996 (the previous year's winner was 'Common People' by way of context) and Kenickie did eventually enjoy moderate chart success the following year but ultimately they were never cut out for crossover appeal and they split after the release of their second album in 1998. Lead singer Lauren Laverne went on to become a successful broadcaster and her band are fondly remembered by many (myself included) as a breath of fresh air amongst the Britpop bands, perhaps too clever to succeed in a period dominated by New Labour and ruthless commercialism and ultimately incompatible with any of the musical pidgeonholes that existed at the time. Britpop's loss was everyone else's gain though and 'Come out 2 nite' remains one of the finest singles of the late 90s.
Super Furry Animals - Something 4 the weekend (July 1996)
Britpop's expansion to nationwide phenomenon meant that bands could spring up from all over the British Isles and have a decent stab at stardom on the strength of one record, some would say flooding the market with soundalike drones but ultimately granting exposure to groups that would otherwise have remained niche market successes at best. Welsh weirdos the Super Furry Animals were one such band, the sort of guys your Welsh mates would previously have kept as a homegrown secret but whom Britpop allowed to rise to national prominence without having to dilute their oddball charm. Wales had been routinely patronised for much of the 1990s with the rare breakthrough groups like the Manic Street Preachers making only veiled references to their homeland but by the mid 90s the British indie boom had expanded to include underground success for the likes of Gorkys Zygotic Mynci, Catatonia and the Super Furries who all bagged indie chart hits over the course of 1995. SFA dropped their début on Creation records the following year to immediate chart success, notching several mid-table hit singles whilst never threatening the mainstream domination of the more commercial offerings from Oasis, The Charlatans and Kula Shaker. By that time Britpop was a dirty word, particularly for the non-English bands and SFA famously declared that they'd feel more comfortable playing a festival bill with bands from totally different genres rather than being mixed in with the standard indie line-up. 'Something 4 the weekend' is probably their most memorable track of the era, a hymn to experimenting with sex and drugs backed with a devilishly catchy chorus and a wacked-out video of the band in a chemistry lab. SFA were perhaps the best indie band of the latter half of the 1990s and the ones to set the trend of not belonging to any trend, ploughing their own idiosyncratic furrow instead of merely plodding along with the commercial sound of the time like every other band. Their survival way into the following decade proves that this was a wise choice and although their early material can easily fit into the same bracket as the classic Britpop bands, their output clearly went far beyond any limits imposed by the genre and they were soon out in a field of their own whilst others floundered around them in the late 90s. Perhaps the last great band to emerge from the mid 90s indie boom, they nevertheless proved a valuable addition to the roster and one that has aged remarkably well since Britpop's heyday.
Oasis - D'you know what I mean? (July 1997)
And to think I nearly got through here without including any Oasis.....I could have included any of their early singles in here but ultimately I decided to plump for their last truly great release to mark the end of their creative peak as well as curtain call on Britpop's period in the sun. Aside from the undeniable charm of 'Definitely Maybe' and the runaway success of 'Morning Glory', Oasis had also thrown out an unstoppable string of hit singles which typically matched the lead track's potency with some equally memorable B-sides and maintained a stranglehold on the British charts from 'Supersonic' in April 1994 through to 'Don't look back in Anger' in February 1996, asserting their authority like no other band could at the time. Every Oasis single became an event in itself with the promo clip, B-sides and record cover subjected to intense media speculation weeks before each new release. Their run of enormous hits was capped with a series of record-breaking concerts at Knebworth in the summer of 1996 as they confirmed their status as the biggest band of their generation, lording over the British cultural landscape in a way that no band had managed for years. Observers watching them stand aloft as kings of rock 'n' roll must have all come to the same conclusion - having soared so high they could only go downhill from there. It didn't happen immediately but their overblown third album was their first material to underwhelm, boasting a handful of great tracks but ultimately victim to its own coke-fuelled ambition and pompous self-indulgence. Whilst they'd previously been able to crank out three and a half minute indie anthems whilst waiting for the kettle to boil, 'D'you know what I mean?' clocks in at over seven minutes with backwards vocal loops, instrumental codas and layers of expectant twittering. It was their most epic moment in single format and was equal to the expectation surrounding their third album but ultimately the rest of the record wasn't up to scratch - follow-up 'Stand by Me' stalled at #2 and was the first time they sounded like they were going through the motions and perhaps more significantly the third single 'All Around the World' saw them revert to formulaic gear-shift mode, hopelessly flinging layer upon layer of bombast and decadence at the song to the point where things just became ridiculous. Oasis had become the equivalent of the gakked-up socialite refusing to admit that the party was over, that it was in fact 11am the following day and perhaps time to take a break. Ditto for the Britpop movement - the moment had passed and the genre's own self indulgence along with various other shifts in UK culture (New Labour, Lady Di) saw Britpop become synonymous with the past rather than the present. Oasis would live to see another day but from then on would be a band clinging to past glories rather than leading the field for new music. 'D'you know what I mean?' was their last truly majestic moment and deserves celebration but it was ultimately one last blow out before the book closed on Britpop for good.
(If you want more in the same vein then check out John Harris' 'The Last Party', an all-encompassing analysis of the Britpop years with plenty of other pointers and some juicy industry secrets. It's a top read.)
