So, what do we think of "Britpop" now?

Backslapping time. Well done us. We are fantastic.

Britpop...was

One of the most vibrant times in British music
5
7%
Responsible for some of the 90s best stuff
14
20%
Mostly a media-beat up, but a few great groups arose out of it
21
30%
A shamelessly derivative cover-up, in which only a couple of acts justified even half their hype
18
26%
A joke, just terrible mostly
7
10%
What's Britpop?
5
7%
 
Total votes: 70

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(Rain Of Crystal) Spires
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Postby (Rain Of Crystal) Spires » 28 Nov 2003, 14:40

I don't see Stereophonics as being the least bit britpop or baggy. But that's just a New Englander talking, I guess.

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Postby Owen » 28 Nov 2003, 15:37

mozman the snowman wrote:You're having a laugh with the Boo Radleys surely: one half decent song and then they disappeared off the radar (or did they change their name to Radiohead in 1996? - I can't remember).


Giant Steps was a better album than any of the britpop bands managed. Their 'one half decent song' kind of obscures the fact that they owed more to MBV than the kinks and were name checking Coltrane and bringing in free jazz influences when Radiohead were written off as grunge wannabes.

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Postby Leg of lamb » 28 Nov 2003, 19:22

I still think Parklife is a pretty joyful album and, hence, it gets a few spins every so often - End Of A Century, This Is A Low, To The End, etc ... are great songs, and I think I'll get a lot of pleasure from them for a while yet. Of course, they sound like they're being written with the hideous cultural affectations of Britpop in mind, but they have a lot more guile, wit and genuine melodicism (not just terrace-chant anthemry) than they're often given credit for. It's far too long an album and the second side in particular plumbs some shit, but I'd like to see it remembered fondly.

Fortunately Blur had the sense to (d)evolve and morph into something far more interesting. The rest was complete shit - it's important to remember that not all British guitar music being made at the time can be put in the same bracket. An album as dark and soulful as The Bends sounds completely at odds with the retarded jaunt-fest that was exploding around it, so I don't see how Radiohead could ever be considered in the same breath as the majority of Britpop bands.

So, in summation, Blur are good, rest are poo, good stuff being made outside of the movement.
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Postby Munki » 28 Nov 2003, 21:17

Great thread this!
I was in my early 20's when the britpop thing took off,it certainly put the focus back into guitar music at a time when acid-house had went shite and morphed into happy-hardcore.
I loved Definetly Maybe at the time and Oasis in general along with Supergrass and Pulp.However i think nostalgia clouds judgement when it comes to looking back at this period,sure there were some great records at the time but i can't/don't listen to any of this stuff now as it just sounds really thin and well, dated.
I agree with one of the earlier posts about Blur,i'm by no means a fan but their willingness to try something diffrent and embrace other genres has to be admired.Oasis are a pathetic joke nowadays and should have chucked it after Knebworth,but millions still like them so fairdos.
I hope no-ones including The Charlatans in with "Britpop",a fantastic band who can still conjuer up sme serious grooviness and who are continually improving after nearly 15 years together.
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Postby Phil T » 28 Nov 2003, 21:31

It was a movement. As in "bowel movement". :?

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Postby Chemical Sister » 28 Nov 2003, 21:37

Tonner und Blitzen wrote:It was a movement. As in "bowel movement". :?


Some Might Say.......
So?

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Postby Piggly Wiggly » 29 Nov 2003, 04:42

When nationalism supercedes a genuine hunger for the best tunes, ultimately the punters end up with a bill of goods.

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Re: So, what do we think of "Britpop" now?

Postby Bungo the Mungo » 29 Nov 2003, 06:21

griff wrote:
The Right Festive Profile wrote:
Likewise Definitely Maybe has really been ravaged by the Passage of Time, and now sounds like a supremely arrogant, but supermely generic peice of work.


bollocks. at the time it was an incredibly exciting album and it still stands up today. of course it was generic, it never pretended to be anything else, but it has an added magic ingredient that took it way above other run of the mill guitar-music-by-numbers acts . true, what's gone since might jaundice opinions of "definitely maybe" (the boorishness of both lead singer and fans, the inability to move on too much stylistically or produce anything as vital in that style....) but it's still a classic and not at all dated to my ears.


well said that man!

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Postby Magilla » 29 Nov 2003, 08:49

A Terrapin In A Pear Tree wrote:'Giant Steps' is a WORK OF GENIUS.



Image

Couldn't have put it better myself, one of the great John Coltrane's finest albums.

As for the Boo Radley's, well, not a bad pop band, but fuck-all compared to Coltrane. 8)
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Postby Owen » 29 Nov 2003, 14:34

Merry XMasgilla wrote:
A Terrapin In A Pear Tree wrote:'Giant Steps' is a WORK OF GENIUS.



Image

Couldn't have put it better myself, one of the great John Coltrane's finest albums.

As for the Boo Radley's, well, not a bad pop band, but fuck-all compared to Coltrane. 8)


Well no but the fact they were naming stuff after Coltrane and seeing the links between his sheets of sound and MBV is light years above the 'I like the Beatles me' vision of what pop music should be that was in fashion a year or so later.

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Postby Cédric » 29 Nov 2003, 14:36

Owen wrote:
Merry XMasgilla wrote:
A Terrapin In A Pear Tree wrote:'Giant Steps' is a WORK OF GENIUS.



Image

Couldn't have put it better myself, one of the great John Coltrane's finest albums.

As for the Boo Radley's, well, not a bad pop band, but fuck-all compared to Coltrane. 8)


Well no but the fact they were naming stuff after Coltrane and seeing the links between his sheets of sound and MBV is light years above the 'I like the Beatles me' vision of what pop music should be that was in fashion a year or so later.


True. And well said.

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Postby Silent Bob » 29 Nov 2003, 16:20

The Right Summery Profile opined
Likewise Definitely Maybe has really been ravaged by the Passage of Time, and now sounds like a supremely arrogant, but supermely generic peice of work. It's hard to know what the fuss was about now, listening to that album, especially considering all their best riffs of that album were stolen from T-Rex. It's still their best album mind you, reasonable fun, but in no way justifying any of the fuss, musically that is...


Funny you should say that. Last week in the quiz I set, in the music intros round we had cigs and alcohol. Most people who got it wrong put the band as T-Rex.

As for Britpop. I just remember it as being a very exciting time for music and the charts containing a lot of the music I liked. That is somewhat of a novelty.
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Postby Guest » 29 Nov 2003, 17:31

I see that not too many Americans have added to this thread. At the time I loved britpop. It came along and showed me that music can be fun. We were bombarded with shit like Hole, Smashing Pumpkins, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, etc. This is what was big here. You can't tell me Blur would be a breath of fresh air from all that.

I still remember hearing 'Live Forever' on the radio and saying, "Fuck me!". Then I went and got Definitely Maybe and loudly said, "Fuck me! Music can be fun again." And I still listen to the bastard and continue to follow Oasis.

But as I found myself listening to Modern Life Is Rubbish on repeat five times these past few days, I still love britpop. The sheer naivity and joy of dumb kids making dumb and catchy guitar rock still gets to me.

I remember being jealous reading British magazines in 1997 and all of them were about Blur and Oasis and here they were all about Metallica releasing another steaming pile of poo that everyone will talk about for a year to come.

It pains me to see people in the UK whining about the 'scene'. Maybe you guys were overexposed or whatever. Here it was and continues to be a breath of fresh air and some fine albums.

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Postby The Write Profile » 07 Dec 2003, 03:36

I just finished typing out the review to Suede's singles compilation, I'm sure some of my opinions will go down like a ton of bricks...

Suede: The Singles

(Sony Music)

The British music press has never been known for its restraint, but the hype dished out to Suede was extreme even by their standards. In early 1992, even before they had recorded their first single, Melody Maker declared them the “best new band in Britain”. Intermittently, Suede fulfilled the potential. This compilation collects all 21 of their A-side singles.

Their 1993 self-titled debut album heralded the songwriting pairing of brooding, cyclic guitarist Bernard Butler and the ostentatious David Bowie-by way of-Morrissey vocals of front man Brett Anderson. The admirably histrionic debut single The Drowners is still probably the band’s finest moment, displaying the peculiar chemistry that Anderson/Butler mustered at their peak. Metal Mickey, with its Goth/Glam musical disjunction and Anderson’s bizarrely camp vocal is a decidedly tasty piece of British guitar pop and So Young remains as enticingly tainted as it was all those years ago.

1994’s Dog Man Star remains the group’s artistic triumph, but by the conclusion of recording Bernard Butler had left the group. Perhaps such inner turmoil was indicative in the singles released on that album, in particular The Wild Ones, with its epic scope akin to a more introverted Ziggy Stardust and the anguished Stay Together, where Brett Anderson moves from precious to agonizing.

However, what this compilation shows was how inconsistent they were after Butler’s departure. 1996’s Coming Up tried its best to replicate the chemistry of Anderson/Butler, now with a new guitarist (Richard Oakes), but only the languid Everything Will Flow matches the heights of its predecessors. The heartwarming sentiment of Saturday Night was probably the last genuinely great single the group released. Although 1999’s Electricity briefly conjured the energy of their early years, it was too little, too late.

They flew, but they never quite soared.
4/5
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Postby The Red Heifer » 07 Dec 2003, 03:41

Fuck you Sheepy, Electricity was a fucking great single :P Head Music is also a goddamn great piece of disc.

and also Beautiful Ones? Hello? Best fucking Suede single. I'm just playing around with the mock anger, but c'mon Beautiful Ones would almost be the best single to come out of Britpop, let alone Suede.
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Postby -- » 07 Dec 2003, 03:45

I'm sorta with Trip (soz :P ) on this one... but then, I only own the first Suede album...

I love those first singles (still got the 12s somewhere), but that's pretty much all that gets played. I went off them really quickly. Something in the band changed between the release of the debut and the recording and release of the second (Butler leaving?) and they never caught my attention again.

Fave single is The Drowners. To my mind, there's something terribly English about that wobble in Anderson's voice...

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Postby The Write Profile » 07 Dec 2003, 07:56

The Red-Nosed Heifer wrote:Fuck you Sheepy, Electricity was a fucking great single :P Head Music is also a goddamn great piece of disc.

and also Beautiful Ones? Hello? Best fucking Suede single. I'm just playing around with the mock anger, but c'mon Beautiful Ones would almost be the best single to come out of Britpop, let alone Suede.


Beautiful Ones I fell is too much of a retread of their first two albums, if you note I actually said that I liked Electricity. It is a fine single (in fact I put it on my thread of "great opening tracks on mostly mediocre albums")

The Drowners is still the moment which I feel is their best for me, it's about as close as they ever got to bottling their strange kooky chemistry that they possessed. Anderson's vocal sounds so...impassioned, intenese and contained
Obviously that's my opinion.
As for mock anger, meh, it's water off a duck's back, especially for the pasting I got about making a few generalisations on the Chills a couple of days ago :wink:

Btw, I think the Chills are a great, great band, who are still the goods live
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Postby Balboa » 07 Dec 2003, 11:40

Ced wrote:Britpop was a very exciting thing at the time. Oasis was a great band for, maybe, 18 months. That said, the records they released at that time ("Definitely Maybe" and a lot of single B-sides) stood the test of time, IMO. It never was brilliant, but you can still hear that something was happening on these records.




Pretty much sums up my feelings about it all. It was an exciting time (I was 19/20) even if ultimately the music never matched the hype. It probably lasted 12months at most before it rapidly went downhill - but for that short period of time it looked like good things were happening.

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Postby Shaky Jake » 07 Dec 2003, 12:05

Britpop was a musical internet bubble that burst.

Back then you'd have all (well 90% of you) been into Blur, Oasis, Pulp etc. If this forum had existed then, it would have been dominated by discussion of these bands.

Now you want to pretend that you weren't taken in. Now you want to distance yourself from it, to maintain cool points. You weren't taken in, you weren't suckered.

You're all a bunch of sheep.

Baa.

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Postby Brother Spoon » 07 Dec 2003, 12:17

Shaky Jake wrote:Now you want to pretend that you weren't taken in. Now you want to distance yourself from it, to maintain cool points. You weren't taken in, you weren't suckered.


Not a chance. I thought it was crap then and I think it's crap now. There were far greater bands around at that time, in the US and in continental Europe and even in the UK, outside of Britpop. Oasis, Suede, etc. they were terrible as far as I'm concerned.


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