To Have Had The 90’s.

Lots of mistakes. I thought it would be appropriate.

It is only with hindsight that I wish I had made more of the Britpop years. Britpop may be an awful name, one that various leading lights of the time are still either very proud or very ashamed to have coined, but as a cultural movement it was probably about the last truly exciting thing that happened in Britain, and as I get older I am increasingly aware that I sort of let it drift past without allowing myself get caught up in it all. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I’d been a little less dismissive of it. Life is, of course, packed full of regrets, some of which can keep you awake at night, and I’d be lying if I said that I truly got the most out of being around in the 90’s and at the perfect age to soak up all the fun. Sure, I had my own fun instead, but not always doing the right thing with the right people and, crucially, to the right music. And that’s because when Britpop was at its height, I was busy listening to what I deemed to be better stuff (in fairness most of it still is), stuff that had already had twenty or thirty years to mature, precisely the time the best music needs to become timeless.

Oddly, I would still say that most of Britpop was mostly pretty rubbish. In 2023, does anyone really need a Shed Seven in their lives? Or Space? Or The Lightning Seeds, Mansun, Gene, Menswear, The Bluetones or The Boo Radleys? You could squeeze all the best of their collected works safely onto a double CD, if you thought it was worth the bother. The women didn’t do much better, I’m afraid to say, and I would politely suggest that the reason you don’t hear Sleeper, Lush, Echobelly, Elastica and Catatonia on the radio very often is because they just weren’t all that good. Indeed, if we had to take it seriously, I think it would be a struggle to name more than, just for the sake of it, ten enduring Britpop bands that made music that still stands up to the passing of time. Suede and Supergrass? Most certainly. Stereophonics and Kula Shaker? Most certainly not. Ash and Super Furry Animals? Oh, go on then. Ocean Colour Scene and Embrace? Not so much, thanks. I would suggest that Radiohead, Massive Attack and Portishead, but they weren’t really Britpop at all – rather they slipped through the net because they were making music on a far more transcendental level, creating dazzling new corners of sound that others would spend entire careers failing to replicate.

And what is left is a bunch of not much that never went anywhere and, at the other end of the scale, the biggest of the beasts, the four horseman of the Britpopalypse (sorry, that’s dreadful): Blur, Oasis, Pulp and The Verve. I have ordered them thus because there is a gulf that divides them. The Verve were too fractious, too bloated, too pretentious and, in many instances, too dreary to ever warrant the description of legendary. And Pulp were just annoying: easily the most annoyingly overrated and too-clever-for-their-own-good band of the decade – I will never own a copy of ‘Different Class’ on principle, because I heard it so much as a student and not once then, or since then, have I been convinced it housed anything of enduring merit. ‘This Is Hardcore’ is by far a better album, and even that isn’t meant to be a condition free complement. The lasting stature of Pulp is due to nostalgia, luck and the grating, bouncy, singalong fluff that is ‘Common People’, and I feel a bit sorry for anyone who rate them as their favourite band of all time. And then after Pulp all that is left of what was left to start with are the two bands which defined and ultimately transcended Britpop, for better or worse. And I know full well you know exactly who I’m referring to, because anyone who has ever heard of Britpop knows.

Blur v Oasis was always such a cheap shot. I doubt either of them wanted it to be that way, though it didn’t always seem that way at the time. And at the time I had very little time for either. Blur were pumping out a lot of faux-cockney knees-up, art school, clever bollocks tosh and Oasis weren’t much more than a lout gang northern pub rock outfit, albeit with a good sense of humour. They may have been to two big knockers on the block, but they weren’t so good to notice that the songs they threw out for their ultimate #1 head-to-head were two of the very worst songs they ever recorded. Oasis’ ‘Roll With It’ is embarrassing in its lack of imagination, so much so that if I were to attempt a little songwriting (I have written fewer than one songs in my life and never intend to start) even I might come up with something as bad, on a good day. On reflection I have no doubt that Noel Gallagher was one of the best songwriters of his generation, but he certainly wasn’t at home with the lights on when he wrote ‘Roll With It’. Somehow Blur’s ‘Country House’ is even more dreadful. It is the accumulation of everything that didn’t work about Blur, so much so that they didn’t really write anything like it again, in doing so quietly admitting to the world that they were in a cul-de-sac they didn’t like the sound of anymore. As we all most likely know, ‘Country House’ went to #1, Blur winning the battle but Oasis winning the bitter, pointless little war that ensued. It is the last thing anyone should remember about Blur and Oasis and yet the first thing that everyone does. Which is a shame.

Because they were both great bands. In my awkward, unattractive, stubborn way it took me years to realise it, but then music has a funny way of working that way. Blur went on to record what are easily their two best records, the finer of which, ‘13’, is one of the jewels in the crown of 90’s British music and still hasn’t dated one bit. The centrepiece of ‘13’, a song called ‘Tender’, is also their masterpiece. Their artistic peak, reached long after the war with Oasis was over and the bodies of Britpop littered the floor. Not ‘Parklife’ or ‘Girls and Boys’ or ‘The End’ or ‘Song 2’. They belong where they belong, but ‘Tender’ is ageless and gently profound and packed full of longing and heartbreak and hope, and it will be there forever. This is exactly how good Blur could be, and if I’d been quicker off the mark I would have had tickets to see the at Wembley this summer. Never mind. I decided I could truly like Blur when I first heard ‘Tender’, and I have loved them, for all their flaws, ever since.

Oasis were a more difficult proposition. This is because I already liked them in a very vacuous way but I wasn’t sure why. Over time I have realised that their second album isn’t very good and that their debut album is far better than I gave it credit. I have also learnt that every one of their subsequent albums has a handful of great tracks. Without fail. ‘Fuckin’ In The Bushes’, ‘Gas Panic’, ‘Little By Little’, ‘Falling Down’ and ‘Shock Of The Lightning’ to name but a few. In delivering more good songs in one album than Shed Seven did, well, at all, they more than deserved their time in the sun. They were dependable. They were solid. They were loud. They had tunes and (and I never thought I’d say this) they had a front man who could deliver. A frequent twat, true, but a proper front man all the same. Their worst album remains ‘Be Here Now’, a coked-up, lumpy soup of indulgent, arrogant shit with a lot of bang but not much fizz. That said it opens with the best thing they ever did: ‘D’you Know What I Mean?’. This one song should be a national anthem for somewhere. It is grand and brash and goose-bumpy and it kicks like a mule. If you ever doubt that Oasis were a great band then listen no further than this song. Just let go and allow them to do their work.

Ultimately this is only a gentle skip through the very basics (if that) of what I missed about Britpop when I was busy doing something else. I am reading a book by Dylan Jones call ‘Faster Than A Cannonball: 1995 And All That’ at the moment and am hopelessly gripped by it. It is essentially a potted history of a time that I lived through. An account of a cultural orgasm that I was lucky enough to be alive to see and a time that I feel ever more fondly of as I get older. I’m not saying I wasted my 20’s but if I could do them again, I’d certainly give them a little more thought. As I write many of the Britpop bands I so easily dismissed are still touring and the murmurs about an Oasis reunion are gently breaking into a canter. It may not happen but, oh boy, if it did can you imagine what an event that would be? It would make the ground rumble and the leaves shiver, and it would put a huge great bloody smile on my face. Which is exactly what music is meant to do. Britpop, shitpop, littlepop, bigpop; I’m glad I was there to see it all, so I could learn to love it in my own time. What a privilege it was. Kids these days really don’t appreciate what they’ve missed out on. I had Oasis and Blur and they’ve got The 1975 and Wet Leg. And that, dear reader, is no competition at all.

G B Burton. 17.06.2023