šŸŽµ How Good Are They Really šŸŽµ The Libertines

They came out at just the right time for me and they were my first music obsession. Through that I started going on music forums which led to the discovery of so many things that I listen to, read and watch now. A real gateway band.

The music doesnā€™t stand up though and it was wrong of the music press to make teenagers idolise a heroin addict. 2/5 because Up The Bracket has some good songs and theyā€™ve played some enjoyable gigs.

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First album is genuinely great, second one is ok in parts, absolutely swallowed whole by everything that took place around them. A generous, nostalgic 3 cause I really loved Up The Bracket.

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Still really like this

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Also it is a really big breakfast lads.

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Was gonna give it a 3 because I thought they had one or two bangers, then I looked at the singles list and was like nah all of these songs are shit

Canā€™t give them a nostalgia vote bocos really I was too young for them, theyā€™d long since broken up when the other solid lads were listening to them when I was a teenager. I kind of want to give them a nice score just because their presence reminds me of house parties and street drinking around GCSEs time, but I never even liked them I just knew people who did. Caught probably most of their Leeds festival and Glastonbury comebacks, both times I had a massive sense of ā€œis this really the band people piss themselves with reverence aboutā€.

Huge for some people but I clearly do not get it at allā€¦ Probably a 1

Up The Bracket is great all the way through, I absolutely love it. Raucous at points, gentle and folky at other times.

Very appropriate that Donā€™t Look Back Into The Sun was released at the point it was all starting to go wrong. Itā€™s also a fantastic song.

Canā€™t Stand Me Now is an absolute classic and this live performance is superb and also heartbreaking

Never clicked with the rest of album 2 or anything since.

When Iā€™ve seen footage of them playing since they got back together, the old magic isnā€™t there. Pete looks like heā€™s not really in the room.

But for a brief moment, they had something really really special.

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I really like the intro to Canā€™t Stand Me Now. Thatā€™s probably about it.

I dislike the nasty, confrontational edge to a lot of their stuff. Iā€™m generally happy not to have to think about them.

One of those bands where i wouldnā€™t of disliked them quite so much if it wasnā€™t for how aggresively ott their fans and some of the media were about them. All for people being positive about a young band and enjoying music but theyā€™d of had you believe Pete was in line for the Nobel Prize for his blighty, albion, guvnā€™r lyrics.

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this is definitely entertaining but not in the way they meant

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3 because I have met the drummer a number of times and he and his family are very nice and Gooners. But the music is not for me

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are you a gooner?

One OK album. A handful of decent songs. A really, really big breakfast.

1/5.

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:grinning: Gonna stick my neck out here and say their best days might be behind them.

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The drummer is fine.

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So disappointed in Mick Jones for getting involved with this lot. You were in The Clash, ffs!

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Had to Google this, mustā€™ve missed it at the time. Youā€™re right, that really is a big breakfast. Like that he had a strawberry milkshake with it too. Might be a 4 now.

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Was already in my mid-20s by the time they started getting radio play, so wasnā€™t swept up in that kinda teen thing like I was with Oasis and I was only getting NME for the crossword by this point.

Couple of early singles are okay, but nothing special.

Saw them at a festival when they had that other bloke singing - really, really poor gig with a ridiculously large crowd.

Loved Up The Bracket and 50% of the follow-up at the time. I was quite an impressionable 20 year old back in 2002 and properly bought into the romance of the whole pseudo Victorian drugged up intellegentsia, renegade gigs in Hackney living rooms thing, to the point where they actually inspired me to up sticks and move to London from the sleepy north Wales village Iā€™d always lived in. So in that respect I canā€™t thank them enough and they deserve a 5*

(* Actually gave them a 2 because Iā€™m a jaded, cynical 39 year old now, the second and third records were mostly garbage and hindsight is fucking great)

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NOPE

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Iā€™d give them a 1 for being the most relentlessly overrated shite for a brief period in the early-to-mid 2000s, spawning a whole cult of dickheads fawning over their twat idol Pete Doherty based on a largely fabricated backstory and pretence that they were part of some vibrant DIY scene in North London when really they played some rich kids coke-fuelled house party one timeā€¦

But that would be denying that Donā€™t Look Back at the Sun, Canā€™t Stand Me Now and Time for Heroes arenā€™t all great songs, so Iā€™ll give them a 2 at least.

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