Been thinking a lot about nationalism and isolationism, and how there were a lot of local music scenes that became global, and Britpop and Madchester was part of that map of music, where cities and countries got brief moments to shine whilst Americanization seemed to become the norm.
Definitely seems like something big is happening with a shift where local music is pushing back - suspect in part because itās now easier to invest in being big in a city, country or continent than it is to be a global star.
Thereās also been a shift to local editors and algorithms on Spotify, YouTube and TikTok so things can become quite localised (like, if I watch UK news and listen to certain acts, thatās gonna give a mirror of me on YouTube a similar homepage but it might not be my music consumption that causes that algo overlap)
Be curious of your thoughts about Britpop but also where things might be going off the back of my tangle of thoughts.
In terms of britpop, I always found it odd to be seen as a reaction to grunge as Blur were so into Pavement and obviously the self-titled album with song 2 was very grunge. And Definitely Maybe had a sort of British twist of grunge but maybe thatās a bit revisionist.
Then again, when I released the Kaisers I was so bored with new rock revolution of bland garage rock (hello the Mooney Suzuki, The Datsuns, etc), and it was maybe a reason why they felt like a breath of fresh Yorkshire air amongst the brylcream ārockersā doing their best Marquee Moon in the style of Iggy Pop, Lou Reed or whatever.
I wrote my uni dissertation (largely) about this topic in 2013 although bought into the accepted orthodoxy that it was a response to grunge. Would link it but i recently made that site private
From what i rememberā¦ Cool Britannia and Britpop celebrated a reductive but cohesive British (English) national identity rooted in the past. Britpop was overwhelmingly male, white and English, bands that diverged from that template have mostly been forgotten by the wider public (Echobelly, Elastica etc). British literature of the time better reflected increasing diversity of the population and a less cohesive, more fragmented national identity
in Parklife all the characters who are suffering from mental health issues are exiled to the peripheries of the UK (Tracey Jacks going to Walton on the Naze, the queen gojng round the bend and jumping off Landās End) whereas London is framed more as a stabilising force. In contrast to Martin Amisās London Fields which inspired the album
Damn you for posting this as I was on my way out and already running late
Blurās self titled isnāt a Britpop album, itās them turning their back on āthe movementā at the behest of Graham Coxon, who was always into Pavement etc i think and led them in that direction
Can recommend The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock by John Harris as although his affectations can be quite annoying it does cover this exact topic and there are interviews with the band members about the USA/UK thing. Suede dont consider themselves to be Britpop (I would say they are, at least initially) but they were certainly inspired to write songs about the minutiae of English life in response to grunge, even if they hated the crass symbolism of what came after and regretted being involved with that Select āYanks go home!ā magazine cover.
Not convinced it was a reaction to anything tbh. It was a bunch of diverse bands who made ācredibleā pop music that record labels grouped together under one banner - nothing more.
Definitely think that first tweet in the opening post is just inflammatory bullshit.
Stamping a retrospective narrative on this stuff beyond the purely commercial story is fanciful imo.
Couple of bands get signed and pushed into commercial āsuccessā, so labels hunt for similar and push those.
Now thereās a āsceneā, but actually itās just a self fulfilling prophecy. The ābestā get remembered, the rest forgot.
Simultaneously thereās rappers and reggae and thrashers and post-rockers and punks and folk and electronics and all the rest, just as before and after.
BRITPOPE: Our doctrine states that MAN is born with inherent sinā¦ and I have it on good authority that God was referring to CITY! WAAAAYY GLORY GLORY MAN UNITED
I agree that Britpop as a musical genre is pretty meaningless - a lot of the bands have virtually no connection with one another whatsoever; but I donāt think that means the āmarketing construction of Britpopā should be dismissed as just that. I think thereās a lot relating to Blair and to what British identity has come to mean and how itās come to be manipulated that links back to the mythology that was built up and has been perpetuated since
Great thoughts, although I am of the opinion that Suede were not a Britpop band and would argue that in fact that Dog Man Star was in fact the last of the original post-punk albums that began in the late 70s with Wire, Siouxie, PIL etc. The only Britpop album that Suede made I think was Coming Up which seemed a reaction to the zeitgeist. But thatās just me.
Oh i would definitely agree that Dog Man Star isnāt a britpop album and would only refer to it as such to be lazy. I think the first album is the original Britpop album though!
Cool, although I would argue that the first bripop album is Modern Life is Rubbish. I think the Suede debut is more akin to many of the 80s bands. Iād argue that Butler era Suede were a holdover from the 80s rather than britpop.
For the record, I am not in any way a fan of Blur.
It was partly a āback to rock basicsā reaction against electronic, dance, rave, and hip hop, and partly a parochial nationalist reaction against a wave of American rock bands. Some people were nostalgic for guitar music and ātraditionalā verse/chorus/verse songs and for a time only American bands seemed to be doing that, so Britpop filled a gap,
In reality all of the engines behind Britpop were regressive ones - itās amazing that a few of the bands actually made some good records, but I would maintain that almost all of the best bands at the time were the ones who were most loosely associated with Britpop and who either existed before it or would have existed without it (Elastica, Suede, Pulp).
It was something they discussed on a Chart Music episode once I think - that what the majority of people were actually listening to in 1994/95 was mainly euro dance stuff. But the music press, Top of the Pops etc were a lot happier and more comfortable dealing with bands.
Yeah, I tend to see it as part of a wider cultural trend at the time, tied in with other things like Loaded-era lad/ladette culture, where old-fashioned attitudes were given an ironic-wink makeover to make them palatable.
I think there was also a desire to have (/create) a cultural āmomentā akin to the previous decadesā Summers of love & punk explosion; but musical innovation was happening largely outside white British culture, so what caught the wave (/got pushed) was stuff that looked to the past rather than to the future.