The Short-Lived Power of Britpop in the ‘90s

Flipping back through the tomes of music history, the so-called ‘British invasion’ has happened more than once. In the ‘60s, of course, we exported the likes of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. In the early 2000s, it was names like Coldplay, Adele and Sam Smith who managed to break beyond the shores of our wee islands. But in the ‘90s, emerging from buzz-words like ‘Cool Britannia’, we had Britpop – which, if you believed the music rags of the time, was dominated by two giants of guitar-driven pop: Blur and Oasis. Here, Guestbloggers Nick and Martin have a quick look at the short-lived but oh-so impacting phenomenon that was Britpop.

The Antidote

You might remember the nineties. The age when the population was regularly bombarded with soaring ballads that seemed to cling to the top of the charts for years on end, and when there seemed to be no shortage of brightly coloured and strategically marketed girl and boy bands. What emerged to serve as a welcome antidote to that sparkly, shiny pop machine was equipped with jangly guitars, real British accents, a tasty blend of ‘60s and ‘70s rock and a few radio-friendly three-minute pop smashers that talked about the dirt and grub of living in a post-colonial nation. In other words, Britpop happened.

The La’s

The La’s, who are essentially called ‘the lads’, but in their local Liverpudlian accent, included lead singer Lee Mavers and actually emerged in the late eighties. Their sound was clearly influenced by early sixties bands, including The Beatles, The Who and The Hollies, as evidenced by the biggest hit from their debut album, There She Goes (yep, that one), which was later revealed to be a love note to heroin. The band didn’t stay together that long and finally split, only to reunite briefly for one final tour in 2005.

Suede

Around the same time, there was the band Suede, founded by the Londoner, Brett Anderson – who happened to be a massive Bowie fan. The Bowie influence can be heard all over their self-titled debut album, which received rave reviews from the music press. A Britpop mainstay, Suede’s first and second singles, The Drowners and Metal Mickey both made it into the top 20. The band is still active today and released their most recent album Autofiction in 2022.

Blur & Oasis

While you can’t really put the two in the same category, the largely media-created ‘Blur versus Oasis’ saga helped make the way for a lot of other bands. Blur was a four-piece from London who stormed the charts in 1994 with their third album Parklife, which was packed with modern classics, including the dancefloor-stomper Girls & Boys. Later they wrote Song 2, with the aim of taking the mickey out of their record label, but to the band’s surprise, the label loved it and the song was an unexpected hit.

Not long after the dawn of Blur in the south, there was a rumble up north, where in Manchester two infamously self-assured brothers, Noel and Liam Gallagher had already put together the band Oasis and had released their second album, (What’s the story) Morning Glory. Suddenly the pubs on a Friday night were booming to the sound of anthems like Don’t Look Back in Anger and Wonderwall (a song that Noel later revealed wasn’t about his then-girlfriend at all, but about an imaginary friend who’s always there to save you from your own life. Obviously).

The Britpop Rivalry

Perhaps the most important moment of Britpop happened in August of 1995, when the press pitted the two bands against each other after Blur’s Country House was set for release on the same day as Oasis’ long-awaited single Roll With It. According to the papers, Blur won when Country House took the number one spot. But if that was the battle, then Oasis maybe won the war, because while (What’s the story) Morning Glory was gathering success, the fourth Blur album, The Great Escape was getting slated by the critics.

The Britpop ‘Others’

Britpop remained strong throughout most of the ‘90s, and some of the other highlights from the era included Hush by Kula Shaker; (If You Tolerate This) Your Children Will Be Next by the newly-returned Manic Street Preachers; and who could talk about Britpop without mentioning the Sheffield-based outliers Pulp, whose 1995 album A Different Class seemed to sum up the whole movement in just twelve songs. Then there was Richard Ashcroft’s band The Verve with the hard-to-resist single Bitter Sweet Symphony. The music video was shot on a street in Hoxton in London’s East End, and is an open tribute to Unfinished Sympathy, which was released by the Bristolian trip-hop duo Massive Attack in 1991.

By the close of the ‘90s, it was like we didn’t need Britpop anymore. Coldplay were already on the scene and, since The Strokes had already been together since 1998, it looked like the Americans were on their way again. Many of the bands that had emerged during that fateful era had already fallen away so, to really mark the death of Britpop, the go-to music magazine of the time, the NME, displayed a burned up Union Jack electric guitar on the cover and the world wept… then just put on Wonderwall.