History of britpop

Cool Britannia 1992-1999

by Federico Romagnoli

Cool Britannia

Brexit is certainly not the first moment of political and cultural turmoil faced by Britain. On 16 September 1992, during the infamous Black Wednesday, the pound suffered such a collapse that it was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. That traumatic event coincided with a period of deep political instability, with the Conservative party having lost the towering figure of Margaret Thatcher and, despite having won the election not long before, appearing markedly weaker than in the past.

John Major, the new prime minister, gave the impression of being unable to handle the emergency, and his popularity gradually plummeted. Just as his Labour opponents were on the rise, an unprecedented cultural movement emerged across the country, one that seemed to push forcefully for a change of pace and political direction, shaking off the severity of the long Conservative-led era, which the country's younger generation perceived as suffocating. This celebration of youth and craving for renewed vitality gave rise to the phrase "Cool Britannia", used to describe that general sense of euphoria.

The greatest responsibility for this driving force, for better and for worse, lies with music. Starting in 1992-93, and then exploding in 1994, British music changed face entirely and spawned a wave of bands that would later, for convenience, be filed under the label "britpop". The impact of those artists was so powerful and so defining that for many people, "britpop" and "Cool Britannia" remain, if not directly interchangeable, then at least impossible to consider separately.

In truth, not all of these artists had patriotic intentions. Many of them painted portraits of a nation still hobbled by social inequality, weighed down by drugs and alcohol, and unsure of its future. The stereotype of britpop as a peppy antidote to the depressive themes of American grunge is, in fact, an oversimplification, probably owing to the proverbial exuberance of the Gallagher brothers or to the image of the Blur dancing and pulling faces in the video for “Girls & Boys”(1994). In truth, even in the case of danceable, musically breezy songs, the lyrics could be caricatured and grotesque.

A good deal of the britpop songbook did celebrate positive values, such as solidarity across different social classes and freedom of sexual expression, but it did so from a stance of protest. The positivity they sang about wasn't a portrait of what surrounded them, but of what they wished for and, at that moment, felt was missing. In short, these were protest songs.

There were also tracks that didn't bother describing "the world we'd like", but instead plunged into an analysis of the world as it actually was, and there things became even more perceptibly bleak: think of "We Are The Pigs" by the Suede (1994), "Cocaine Socialism" by Pulp (1998), "If You Tolerate This..." by Manic Street Preachers (1998).

The sense of patriotism that those bands generated is probably to be traced back less to nationalism itself than to the pride of belonging to a culture that, out of its own squalor, had managed to produce such gifted artists, and to the anticipation of that social vindication of the less well-off classes which everyone had convinced themselves of on the eve of Tony Blair's 1997 victory. Of course, there was no shortage of people who read the whole thing in a more crudely nationalistic light, so much so that some members of the Labour Party ended up distancing themselves from the idea of Cool Britannia, with which they were so often associated.

Something similar happened in parallel in music. A work that was in fact fiercely critical of the very milieu it portrayed also became an icon of British coolness: "Trainspotting", Irvine Welsh's novel, which showed with unflinching honesty the moral collapse of working-class estate life. The question, though, remains the same: was that novel celebrated because people were proud that such a profound exploration of the human soul had emerged from that squalor, or was it celebrated, less nobly, simply because it was "cool and British"? (F. Romagnoli)

By exclusion?

If mapping out britpop's founding values isn't easy, things get even more complicated when trying to describe its musical output. So what actually characterized britpop bands? How do you identify their sound?

First of all, it must be said that britpop was not a musical genre but a movement. So it's not easy to draw its boundaries: it included bands playing easy, radio-friendly music, as well as refined, experimental bands, bands with aggressive, chaotic sounds, as well as bands with a rigorous approach, with every instrument in its proper place.

Britpop conventionally begins with the almost simultaneous release of the singles "The Drowners" by Suede and "Popscene" by Blur, in the spring of 1992. So, if you had any doubts: anything before that date isn't britpop.

Its end is to be placed somewhere towards the close of the Nineties. British journalists are fixated on the year 1997, which supposedly marked the death of the phenomenon, overtaken by the success of the Spice Girls. It's not entirely clear what the connection is with the famous girl group, but every local critic seems willing to perpetuate the idea that britpop was murdered at the hands of the Spice Girls.

In fact, some of Britpop's biggest hits came out well after the Spice Girls had already arrived, think of "Urban Hymns" by the Verve (1997), "Tellin' Stories" by Charlatans (1997), or the "The Best Of" by James, which shifted a million copies in 1998. Typical Britpop bands like Pulp and Suede also had number-one albums in 1998-99, as did the Travis emerged precisely during that period.

1997 can at most be identified as the last year of the britpop golden age, but there's no way to accept a theory suggesting the movement came to a sudden halt right as it was churning out some of its most significant albums, without so much as a fallow period. One could perhaps debate how long that fallow period lasted. In this article we've set the final cutoff at 1999, since the following year would see the release of “Kid A” of the Radiohead e “Parachutes” of the ColdplayThe first was the record of a band that up to that point could be filed under britpop and which suddenly broke violently free of it; the other was a debut work that in itself still showed traces of britpop's aftermath, but was the product of a band belonging to a younger generation, one that would end up symbolising something else entirely. In a way, from 2000 onwards talking about “britpop” stops making sense, if not already on a strictly musical level, then at least on a social and iconographic one.

Once we've established that we need to work within the 1992-to-1999 window, we need to outline what actually goes into the mix. Well, britpop can be considered to include all guitar-driven music that broadly follows the song format, among what was released in the UK during Cool Britannia, provided it didn't explicitly fall under genres still alive and well at the time. For instance, britpop did not include the twee pop more anaemic and stripped-down – derived from the C86 school – that was being released by the Sarah Records. It wasn't britpop shoegaze, even though many of its bands later merged into britpop — in which case, though, it's fairly easy to tell the phases apart (the Ride tracks on “Going Blank Again” sound shoegaze, while those on “Carnival Of Light” belong to a britpop band). The post-rock of the Disco Inferno or of the Stereolabwasn't britpop either. As for the rest, if it didn't belong to a contemporary genre with easily identifiable traits, if the arrangement was guitar-driven, and if the style harked back to something long off the radar, dug up and polished for the occasion, then it was britpop.

It sounds like an extremely convenient definition, but it really is the most honest one possible: how else could you lump together the Supergrass of “Caught By The Fuzz”, offspring of the Rolling Stones and of the punk, with the Mansun of “Being A Girl”, a stone's throw from progressive rock? What connects the elementary music of Oasis to the layered, unhinged sound of the Super Furry Animals? For British rock of the era, britpop was what post-punk had been fifteen years earlier: a primer of contradictions and wildly distant bands, held together only by cultural context and audience.

And like post-punk, britpop too looked to the past and, through the right adjustments, tried to make it feel current again. Every band flaunted a style traceable to some musical current that was, at that moment, dead or at least gone from the front pages, and seemed intent on bringing it back into fashion thanks to the technical progress made in the meantime — much as, in the late Seventies, the Jam had done with mod and beat, the Stranglers with the Doors, the Pop Group with funk and dub, and so on. So Suede resurrected glam, Blur did the same with Kinksthe Kula Shaker with psychedelic rock, Divine Comedy with Scott Walker. As with post-punk, britpop's revisions and updates were substantial, to the point of generating independent and highly innovative aesthetics, impossible to mistake for their source material, even though that source remained clearly recognisable (and it couldn't have been otherwise, since part of the game was precisely to show the connection, with pride in belonging to the same culture).

Under such conditions, it's clear that the boundary isn't always easy to draw, and some bands end up in a kind of limbo, a no man's land, such as the Lightning Seeds, indie pop heroes on the scene since 1989, who nonetheless reached renewed peaks of popularity right during Cool Britannia. (F. Romagnoli)

Britpop in forty albums

This article will attempt to build an essential chronology and discography of britpop. Obviously, it was such a vast movement that, if we tried to include everyone, we'd spend all our time listing obscure names.

In the chronology, we've tried to be as neutral as possible, mentioning more or less every artist who generated a decent amount of interest, if not among the public, then at least among industry insiders. For the discography, however, the filter was stricter and inevitably reflected the taste of whoever made the selection, which may be imperfect, but which offers a fairly complete picture of all the facets of britpop: from its punkier, noisier wing to its more glam and baroque one, from its art rock and experimental side to its intimate and dark one.

The exclusion of heavyweight names is to be considered deliberate, but it doesn't necessarily imply a lack of appreciation on the authors' part. Paul Weller, for instance, is an artist of transgenerational reach, who exerted an enormous influence on British music over the last thirty years, and who released some of his most representative albums right during the britpop era. However, we chose not to include "Wild Wood" (1994) or "Stanley Road" (1995), since Weller wasn't a product of that generation. If anything, he was its godfather, the one who made it possible, but he would probably have made that music regardless of the rise of Cool Britannia. These are records that sound britpop, but are culturally independent of it, sitting on a plane of their own, crossing the movement rather than belonging to it, occupied by Weller alone.

In the same way, the selection has been sparing with bands of a blander, more radio-friendly stripe – such as Ocean Colour Scene, Stereophonics, Bluetones – because we preferred to show just how eclectic britpop actually was, dismantling the rather silly stereotype that would have it as "the Beatles with big guitars". That said, this doesn't necessarily mean those bands weren't important within the movement, especially considering the huge popular success they enjoyed at the time. (F. Romagnoli)

1992

On 30 March 1992, Blur released "Popscene", a single that marked a drastic change of direction from their debut album, "Leisure", which had come out seven months earlier. The new song broke away from the typical Madchester sound that had characterised the band up to that point, unveiling instead a formula halfway between power pop and art punk, driven by a tornado of electric guitar and an invasive horn section. In the lyrics, Albarn laments the lack of originality among contemporary pop-rock bands and the absence of cultural points of reference: a genuine manifesto, laying the groundwork for the revolution that would arrive shortly after. The single stalled at number 32 on the charts, much to the band's chagrin, and they would have to wait until 1994 to achieve commercial success.

Not even a month later, Suede ended up on the cover of Melody Maker without having released anything yet: their London shows had been enough to catch the attention of the industry. On 11 May came "The Drowners", their debut single, which failed to crack the top 40, but like "Popscene" it laid the foundations for the imminent escalation. The ethereal voice of Brett Anderson stands out against Bernard Butler's saturated guitar and the martial rhythm section, giving birth to a sci-fi glam rock for the generation born amid the rubble of conservative England. The lyrics, metaphorical and obscure, are an ode to sexual ambiguity.

In autumn, two more significant singles came out: "Showgirl" by The Auteurs and "Babies" by Pulp. The movement was moving towards the maturity needed to test itself in album format. (F. Romagnoli)

Denim – Back In Denim (Boy's Own, November 1992)

There are many records considered britpop ante litteram—whether because they were released in the years immediately prior, or because they're somehow close in content. It's no coincidence that some guides on the subject bring them up, sometimes giving rise to misunderstandings (hence the small but noisy minorities convinced that britpop begins with the likes of Stone Roses e La’s). Rather than devoting an entire section to proto-britpop, and not wanting to muddy the waters as usually happens, we preferred to represent it symbolically with a single album, one that would make clear the link to what was about to come. The choice fell on the debut by Denim, Lawrence Hayward's short-lived project following the breakup of Felt. The record—with caustic lyrics aimed at pop culture and British collective memory—moves between power pop and garage rock, bolstered by a polished production, glittering glam guitars, hypnotic rhythms and Lou Reed -style ballads laced with analogue electronics. (F. Romagnoli)

1993

On February 16, Suede perform at the Brit Awards: it's the first appearance of a britpop band on a major stage. They play their new single, "Animal Nitrate", in a dissonant, raw rendition, while Brett Anderson spanks himself with the microphone. They end the performance by throwing their instruments to the ground and walking off without so much as a goodbye, leaving the audience stunned and the mainstream press scandalized.

Six days later, Luke Haines, leading his Auteurs, releases "New Wave", which he would later proclaim to be the first true britpop record. Its lukewarm commercial performance (number 35 on the charts), in contrast with the attention Suede are receiving at that very moment, probably laid the groundwork for the strong resentment towards the movement for which Haines would later become known.

On March 29, after almost a year's wait, "Suede" is finally released, and shoots straight to number 1. A few days later, "Select" magazine puts Anderson on its cover, with the Union Jack in the background and the caption "Yanks go home!" (a clear jab at Nirvana-style rock bands, which up until then had seemed destined to represent the future of rock). Britpop is now officially a movement of national significance.

In September, "Suede" wins the Mercury Prize, beating, among others, "New Wave" by the Auteurs. Meanwhile, Blur have released a new album, "Modern Life Is Rubbish" (which sells less than hoped, but later becomes a classic), and a still-unknown band called Oasis has signed a deal with Creation. (F. Romagnoli)

Auteurs – New Wave (Hut Records, February 1993)

It's genuinely hard to understand the resentment Luke Haines has repeatedly voiced towards britpop, especially if you listen to his Auteurs' debut: setting aside an aesthetic veneer tied to Felt-style indie pop and a tracklist that doesn't make eclecticism its strong suit, "New Wave" proves in every respect to be a perfect emblem of the movement. T.Rex, the folk glam Bowie of "Hunky Dory", Kinks, Hollies: these are the main influences. Electric guitars reworking the crystalline jangle pop of Felt and Smiths in crunchier tones, intellectual and ironic lyrics, and a knack for writing melodies as elegant as they are immediate, combine to make up a dozen songs that would end up, almost despite themselves, becoming the starting point of an exhilarating musical season. The commercial flop would lay the groundwork for the subsequent split from britpop, carried out first in 1994 with a remix album entrusted to techno producer µ-Ziq, then with "After Murder Park", a 1996 album produced by American alt rock king Steve Albini. (G. Rivoira)

Suede – Suede (Nude Records, March 1993)

Like every genre, britpop wasn't born overnight, but is the result of a sum of factors accumulated over time which, at a certain point, were recognized by critics as an aesthetic – or at least a context – that was, on the whole, unprecedented. That “certain point,” being the product of convention rather than exact science, can be debated (even today many disagree on whether “Ramones” is the first punk record), and sometimes it can even be the result of some rather reckless approximations (is “In The Court Of The Crimson King” really the first prog record?) – but the fact remains that history is written by the winners. “Suede” is therefore the epoch-making record that, by convention, splits British music of the era in two: before its release britpop had only made a few faint cries, after its release it would become a movement. The tracklist features eleven melodramatic glam rock anthems updated for the post-shoegaze alternative rock generation, carried to glory by Brett Anderson's theatricality and Bernard Butler's abrasive guitars. (F. Romagnoli)

Blur – Modern Life Is Rubbish (Food, May 1993)

If modern life is rubbish, if “colonialist” America is rubbish, if even the contemporary indie rock you'd thrown yourself into without much conviction is rubbish, there's no other way but to take refuge in the classics. Blunt as it may sound, this is the message a disillusioned but never defeated Damon Albarn threw out in the wake of “Leisure.” And who better to be the guardian spirit of an Englishman rediscovering his own roots than the most representative British songwriter of all time, namely Ray Davies? Don't jump to conclusions, though: the Kinks' legacy is treated with respect, yes, but also with full awareness of the thirty years of rock music that had passed in the meantime. David Bowie, Syd Barrett, Teardrop Explodes, XTC and Jam among others are all reread through a brand-new formula, with a punk attitude but meticulous production and arrangements. Decisive, in this sense, was producer Stephen Street, who managed to spot in Graham Coxon the natural heir to Johnny Marr, and allowed him to build guitar-layering systems as cerebral as they are light on the ear. (G. Rivoira)

1994

Against a bleak political backdrop that sees the Tories legislating against raves and "repetitive beats" (Criminal Justice Act, 1994), it's still Suede and Blur who leave their mark on a year that can be framed as britpop's explosive, large-scale breakthrough.

The former release colossal, heart-wrenching tracks such as the single "Stay Together" (26 February, no. 3 in the charts) and the baroque-apocalyptic hallucination titled "Dog Man Star" (10 October), an album that seals the rupture of the Anderson-Butler creative partnership and, despite sales that weren't disastrous (at least in the UK, where it went gold), scorches the earth around the band.

The latter arm themselves with striped Fred Perry polos and sardonic humour for the hit "Girls And Boys", later included on “Parklife” (25 April, no. 1), a Cool Britannia manifesto and one of the longest-lasting brit archetypes.

Around the two giants, creative endeavours are proliferating, with bands demonstrating just how widespread the "brit" sensibility is becoming. Towering above them all are Pulpcashing in on the promise of their recent singles ("Do You Remember The First Time?", their first entry into the top 40) with the LP "His 'n' Hers" (10 April, their first entry into the top 10). Oasis obviously can't be left out of the roll call. If Blur boast of having "not an ounce of rock'n'roll" in them, the Gallagher brothers make clear they're overdosing on it like Viagra right from the first track of "Definitely Maybe" (29 August, no. 1). "It's Neanderthal rock'n'roll and we do it fucking well," Noel would say some time later, and the circle closes.

Finally, worth noting is the "female" side of brit, which begins to take shape in '94 itself. The first to debut with an album are Sonya Madan's Echobelly ("Everybody's Got One", 22 August), but even earlier, Louise Wener's Sleeper had John Peel drooling over the single "Swallow" (31 January). The real "bang", however, is made by Justine Frischmann's Elastica, with two incendiary singles like "Line Up" and "Connection" (both in the top 20). (M. Losi)

Pulp – His 'n' Hers (Island, April 1994)

If fragments of the "definitive" Pulp's DNA are already present on the single "My Legendary Girlfriend" (1991), it's with this record that one of the sagas destined to change the fate of 90s British pop truly begins. The album where England "intolerant and dandyish, hyper-sexed and creature of habit" (Monica Melissano) as shaped/spied upon by the thirty-one-year-old Jarvis Cocker shines in all its dull, awkward grace. Having fixed the cardinal points of the sound (art rock, disco, démodé pop), Cocker exploits the space between them to dig with deep humanity into the soul of a nation, wandering as a hallucinated voyeur through the lower depths of a provincialism that turns into an aesthetic short circuit (what are "Do You Remember The First Time?" and "Babies" if not emblems of his fetish/disgust for "kitchen sink drama" and dominant machismo ?). The nocturnal swim of "David's Last Summer", as perishable as a summer now down to its last gasp, is a further floating piece in a whirlwind of contradictions that disorients and seduces, as well as a glimpse of a poetics already in sharp focus. It's almost absurd to note that, in fact, all of this is only the beginning. (M. Losi-G. Rivoira)

Blur – Parklife (Food, April 1994)

Blur carry on down the path laid out by "Modern Life Is Rubbish", but with less of the harshness of the sound so that the songs' radio-friendly appeal could shine through, at least for those destined to be released as singles. This doesn't mean, of course, that Coxon stopped slipping in dissonance and distortion at the most unexpected moments, but the sense of psychedelic disorientation caused by the more reckless passages of the previous record has certainly diminished. What hasn't faded, however, is the kaleidoscope effect: what we get is a series of vignettes in which Albarn tackles British society while constantly walking a tightrope between mockery and celebration (more the former, one suspects), while in the background the arrangements move between electronic-tinged art punk ("Trouble In The Message Centre"), jangle pop with baroque orchestration ("Badhead"), and towering ballads with dreamlike choral textures ("This Is A Low"). There are at least two generational anthems here: the tragicomic power pop of the title track, featuring actor Phil Daniels on narrating vocals, and the pansexual funk of "Girls & Boys". (F. Romagnoli)

These Animal Men – Too Sussed (Hi-Rise Recordings, June 1994)

The EP that put Brighton's These Animal Men on the map was without doubt the britpop record closest to '77 punk, spanning everything from its rawest, most destructive forms (the title track is somewhere in the territory of Sex Pistols) to its more melodic, accessible side ("Speed King" echoes with the Undertones). The band was lumped in by the press of the time under the "new wave of new wave" tag (a label that was thankfully dropped almost immediately), and it was precisely thanks to the exposure given by papers like the New Musical Express that the EP managed to crack the British top 40. The game didn't last long, mainly due to the band's inability to build on a rather basic formula, one that could feel thrilling in the moment but needed to evolve to hold up over the long haul. By the time the album came out a few months later, "(Come On, Join) The High Society", public interest already seemed to have fizzled out, for once with good reason. Still, "Too Sussed?" at least deserves a re-listen: with its quarter-hour of adrenaline-fuelled music, it works as the perfect energy drink. (F. Romagnoli)

Manic Street Preachers – The Holy Bible (Epic Records, August 1994)

As hard as it is to pin down, it's fair to say without much hesitation that “The Holy Bible” is a britpop record: while it's true that the grain of its sound owes something to Americanhardcore and to grunge, the blend of progressive rock (the frequent odd time signatures and a few "quirks" reminiscent of Rush between guitars hard and drums), new wave (particularly the more alienating strain of Pil o Killing Joke), melodic choruses, and social satire place the album on the darker side of the movement. Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire write emotionally desolate lyrics, of a world lost among individual dramas, anorexia, racism, hypocrisy and abuse of every kind. Bradfield sings with the maturity of a great vocalist, alternating hoarse registers ("Mausoleum"), theatrical-declamatory tones ("Faster"), and pained warmth ("She's Suffering", "This is Yesterday"). The terribly lucid nightmare of the britpop generation. (G. Rivoira)

Suede – Dog Man Star (Nude Records, October 1994)

Bernard Butler locked in the studio with Ed Buller, compulsively overdubbing guitars and keyboards. Brett Anderson voluntarily secluded in a manor house, taking hallucinogens to inspire the writing of lyrics and melodies. This was, for months, the 1994 of Suede's two souls: a total immersion in their own art that sent the guitarist into a nervous breakdown and very nearly ended the band itself. The result was one of the most tormented records of the '90s, just as it was “Torment and Toreros” in the previous decade: darkly-hued post-glam lacerates the arpeggios of "We Are The Pigs" and "Heroine", love as an impossible utopia tears through "The 2 Of Us" and "Wild Ones", the obsession with stardom staggers across the bleeding red carpet of toxic psychedelia in "Daddy's Speeding" and in the unreal vibratos of "This Hollywood Life". Even a tale of degradation becomes dreamlike poetry in "The Asphalt World", even the eternal boredom of routine brushes against operatic drama in "Still Life". Among the greatest aesthetic manifestos on rock ever made in English music. (G. Rivoira)

Dodgy – Homegrown (A&M, October 1994)

Releasing a single called "Staying Out For The Summer" in September, so dramatically blunting its impact, and then reissuing it the following June, letting it finally enjoy its well-deserved status as a summer hit, is just one of the many paradoxes at Dodgy (and A&M). Between refrain power-pop guitar work and goosebump-inducing choruses, exuberance and moments of melancholy, the single ends up paving the way not for “Homegrown”, the album it opens, but for the following “Free Peace Sweet”, still the trio's best-selling record to date. No great loss, though, since theeffort most solid remains the one from '94, a manifesto of playfulness and sonic kaleidoscope where hints of psychedelic pop (“Crossroads”), of soul mixed with folk-rock (the ballad “We Are Together”), of instrumental skill and top-class melody-making (“One Day” and “Melodies Hunt You”, which pick up the thread left off by the La's) find a home in the '90s and shed their skin there. The seven minutes of “Grassman”, opened moreover by a highly lyrical piano part, contain all the shades of an sound explosive, sunny, fun (and having fun) record. (M. Losi)

1995

Remembered by too many only for the “Battle Of Britpop”, 1995 nonetheless remains the year in which the rivalry between Blur and Oasis rose to the status of dominant narrative: Blur's “victory” on 14 August, by a margin of 58,000 copies sold between the two competing singles (“Country House” and “Roll With It”), was only temporary; as we all know, in the long run it would be Albarn's band who came off worse.

Gloating instead are Pulp: triumphant headliners at Glastonbury after the Stone Roses' withdrawal, not even a month after the anthem “Common People” (22 May, no. 2) and four months before recognising themselves as part of a “Different Class” (30 October, no. 1).

A sour note for Manic Street Preachers: Richey Edwards, guitarist/lyricist, vanishes without a trace on the first day of February; he will be declared “presumed dead” in 2008. A tragedy the band would only exorcise in 1996, moving closer to more traditional Britpop stylings, with the classic “Everything Must Go”.

Over the course of the year, many exponents of the so-called “new seriousness” come to prominence or achieve success — a laughable label coined by Melody Maker in '97 for those bands (Radiohead, Gene, Geneva, Puressence etc.) suspended between big music and brooding reminiscent of Morrissey: British bands, sure, but capable of facing reality without sugarcoating it (as if seriousness and hyperrealism had been traits incompatible with britpop up to that point: just ask Suede or Auteurs for a prompt rebuttal).

Notably, bands previously devoted to other genres fell prey to brit-temptations: the psychedelic Verve, who with “On Your Own” embraced ballad and cracked the top 40; the Boo Radleys, who went from a highly versatile shoegaze sound to full-blown britpop tout court and scored their only No. 1 (“Wake Up!”, 27 March); the Charlatans, who with their fourth, self-titled album (12 September) reclaimed the podium after a good five years.

It's also the year that saw Elastica's consecration (their debut going straight to No. 1), and in which even the steroid-pumped alt-funk-blues of Reef managed to break into the top 10 (“Replenish”, 19 June), proof that the paths of britpop are endless. (M. Losi)

Elastica – Elastica (Deceptive Records, March 1995)

Elastica's debut represents the most genuinely wave-inflected side of britpop. Its sixteen tracks, condensed into a mere forty minutes, are post-punk bullets of unerring melodic talent and typically British cheek. Justine Frischmann's voice, icy, almost unmelodic, and precisely for that reason endowed with its own provocative sensuality, established her as the true great female icon of English music of the decade. The new wave gets rehashed in a thousand forms, and its riffs treated as standards to draw upon in painting new canvases: hence the blatant tribute to the Wire "Connection" is grafted onto a post-glam boogie woogie with a Suede-likeswagger, and "Waking Up", reminiscent of the Stranglers, has that choral lightness typical of Blur.

From "Car Song" to "Stutter", from "Line Up" to "S.O.F.T.", there isn't a single song that fails to lodge itself in your head from the very first listen. Among the essential records of the movement. (G. Rivoira)

Radiohead – The Bends (Parlophone, March 1995)

In 1995, well before the orwellian paranoia and the electronic/post-rock experimentation, the fixed points in the “Radioheads'” pamphlet were three: the stadium rock of U2 (“High And Dry” says it all), the circular arpeggios and self-pitying streak of the Smiths school (“Street Spirit (Fade Out),” “(Nice Dream)”), and the noise pop drift of the Pixies (“Just,” “My Iron Lung”). Binding it all together were Thom Yorke's falsetto-laced vocals and Johnny Greenwood's bold, zigzagging guitar work, both trademarks that would inspire dozens of imitators over the following decade. All this is “The Bends,” the work that hands down to britpop history the band's first fully-formed sonic incarnation. The album wouldn't replicate the success of the single “Creep” in the States, but it cemented Yorke & co.'s following at home (No. 4 on the charts), laying the groundwork for the artistic breakthroughs still to come, already glimpsed here in flashes (the keyboards of “Planet Telex,” the visionary quality of “Fake Plastic Trees,” the presence of Nigel Godrich as sound engineer). (M. Losi)

Supergrass – I Should Coco (Parlophone, May 1995)

Recorded in just three weeks on a very tight budget (it cost more to shoot the video for “Alright” alone, bassist Mick Quinn revealed), Supergrass's debut captures a very young band in a state of grace, already able to play songs that are only deceptively simple with real vigor. The clear punk pedigree shouldn't mislead: the early Jam, Buzzcocks or Ramones records didn't have the attention to dynamics nor the ability to handle frequent shifts in mood, tempo or arrangement that Gaz Coombes's band displays. With the exception of the ever-so-regular and now-classic “Alright” (the Beach Boys transplanted into the Nineties), the record ranges eclectically across daring rhythmic interlocking (“Lenny” and its interplay between kick, distorted bass, snare and hi-hat), unhinged keyboards (“I'd Like To Know”), space rock excursions (“Loose It”), and schizoid marching-band romps (“Mansize Rooster”). Though fully a product of its time, the album would go on to influence many bands of the 2000s, including American ones (My Chemical Romance, MGMT). (G. Rivoira)

Oasis – (What's The Story) Morning Glory? (Creation, October 1995)

Despite liner notes along the lines of “a monumental sound rising to ever greater heights (…), majestically and magically, to soothe the inner wound,” more fitting for a music-therapy manual than for the quintessential brit'n'roll yobs, this remains the britpop album everyone knows (the third best-selling album of all time at home), packed with the hits everyone knows. Polished in its sounds, meticulous in the arrangement of its ballads, elevated by Liam's Rotten-esque snarl and by Noel's guitar style, stuck on page two of “guitar for dummies” (though the shoegaze shades of “Roll With It” deserve a mention, as does Gallagher's knack for writing instantly catchy melodies). The truth is that Oasis were brilliant in turning their limitations into an instantly recognizable trademark. If that trademark ended up, in the eyes of the general public, standing in for a genre that was actually far vaster and, on average, far more refined, some of the blame lies with the UK press too, so enthralled by the Gallaghers' soap opera that it eventually elected them as the topoi of British pop in the '90s. (M. Losi)

Menswear – Nuisance (Laurel, October 1995)

Menswear, from Camden, went down in history as a symbol of one of the worst vices of the British music press: building media hype around an unknown artist, often based on trivial elements (clothing, quotes, gossip), only to trash the record once it came out, thus effectively ending the band's career. It's hard to see what sadistic pleasure drove so many journalists to needlessly raise the hopes of both the bands – dropped from one day to the next – and the readers, who were promised brilliant careers that then lasted the blink of an eye. It's even harder to understand in this specific case, given that the album in question is a brilliant britpop primer, so representative that it could explain the whole movement to anyone who'd never even heard of it. It moves between rowdy Manic Street Preachers-style guitars (“I'll Manage Somehow,” “Little Miss Pinpoint Eyes”), Stones-esque raids (“Stardust”), baroque ballads (“Being Brave”), and venomous art punk anthems (“Daydreamer,” whose deliciously unhinged black-and-white video absolutely deserves a mention). (F. Romagnoli)

Pulp – Different Class (Island, October 1995)

That Jarvis Cocker may well be the most inspired pen of his generation is a point that can never be stressed enough. And yet critical attention has too often focused almost exclusively on Pulp's lyrics, leaving in the background a musical aesthetic that was at least equally vivid. In their greatest classic we find everything that made them unique: there's the talking half-theatrical, half-psychoanalytic delivery of “I Spy,” which forges the best possible union between Pet Shop Boys and the orchestral episodes of “The Wall”; the Morricone-esque theme of “Live Bed Show”; the off-beat pulse of “Disco 2000”; the cultured 70s pop of “Underwear” and “Bar Italy”; the great sentimental ballad “Something Changed”; the adorable “toy” keyboards of “Mis-Shapes.” Then there's “Common People,” where Kraftwerk and Neu travel together through the simplest of harmonic sequences (C-G-F), backed by a majestic production (the lead guitar run through an e-bow to sound like a bagpipe), delivering one of the greatest social anthems ever set to music. (G. Rivoira-M. Losi)

1996

While the tabloids are still dwelling on the aftershocks of the “Battle,” on the strictly musical front the scene is feverish.

In February the Bluetones debut with the all-in-all brilliant guitar pop of “Expecting To Fly” (for one week it will steal the top spot on the charts from “Morning Glory”), while in April Shed Seven, torn between alt-rock and the Smiths, release their most successful work (“A Maximum High,” No. 7).

From Sheffield, Longpigs offer a mix of “brit-drama” and traditional elements (the hammond organ of “Happy Again,” the bluesy streaks of “Sally Dances”), dominated by shifting registers and delivered with an almost soul-like fervor. The choral surge of “On And On” carries the song all the way to No. 16 on the charts (the same fate will befall “She Said”), making “The Sun Is Often Out” one of the cult albums of the era.

A year after their debut “All Change” (16 October 1995, No. 7, 45 weeks in the top 40), John Power's (ex-La's) Cast release the single “Flying”: their highest chart placement on the singles chart (No. 4) and a landmark moment for the “neo-mod” subgenre, whose sound and iconography the press traces back to Ocean Colour Scene and Northern Uproar too, not to mention Oasis themselves. Weighing in – not just on the “clique's” cult of Lambretta scooters and The Who, but on the entire pop scene sweeping Britain, of which he can rightly be called the godfather – is none other than Paul Weller, author of a lengthy piece for Select in October.

Alongside the resurrected Suede, perhaps the real surprises of 1996 are the smash debuts of Kula Shaker (No. 1) and Placebo (No. 5), not to mention Jarvis Cocker who, in protest, storms the stage at the Brit Awards during Michael Jackson's performance, showing off his backside.

Welsh outfit Super Furry Animals don't fare badly either, following up their critically-acclaimed debut “Fuzzy Logic” with one of the most controversial singles of all time: “The Man Don't Give A Fuck” (2 December) is a manifesto of their overflowing imagination as well as a venomous anti-establishment anthem. After all, it's the era of the “Rock The Vote” movement, elections are looming: Labour seeks the backing of the music world, and the new pop generation answers the call. (M. Losi)

Marion – This World And Body (London Records, February 1996)

Marion, from Macclesfield, could probably have boasted a certain cult status had their career not been derailed by singer Jaime Harding's drug problems. Deeming him utterly unreliable by that point, London Records put virtually no effort into promoting the band's second effort, "The Program" (1998), which consequently went unnoticed. And yet, just two years earlier, this debut album had entered the UK chart at number 10, and the quintet had seemed to have nearly made it. "This World And Body" is indeed one of the sturdiest records from that wing of britpop arranged for guitar, bass and drums alone (the occasional touches of harmonica and piano don't alter the setup). Moving between anguished, throat-shredding choruses over gusts of steroid-pumped power-pop guitar, veering at times into punk tout court, these dozen songs seem to offer the British answer to their contemporary emo American counterpart. (F. Romagnoli)

The Divine Comedy – Casanova (Setanta Records, April 1996)

While Cool Britannia celebrates the miseries of the middle class, coating them in a veneer of glamour, dandy Neil Hannon prefers to isolate himself in a fake aristocracy stuffed with literary, musical and cinephile references. It's only with "Casanova", when he discovers the pleasures of the flesh, that our man flirts more decisively with brit paradigms. A "Don Giovanni" tailor-made for British youth, the album parades incestuous couplings between lounge music and Ray Davies (the successful singles "Something For The Weekend" and "Becoming More Like Alfie"), ambitious mini-suites (a "Through A Long & Sleepless Night" full of sighs of wah-wah and Kama Sutra baroque pop), generational proclamations brimming with sarcasm (“Middle Class Heroes”) and an orchestral closer that pierces the heart (“The Dogs And The Horses”). “The Frog Princess” is perhaps the peak of his caricatured misogyny, effective in unmasking the ugliness of the character Hannon has sewn onto himself. Cosseted by the press, the album reaches 60,000 copies in six months. Even more absurd: Divine Comedy become cool. (M. Losi)

Ash – 1977 (Infectious/Home Grown, May 1996)

To be 19 years old with your debut album at the top of the charts: a dream that Tim Wheeler, leader of the Northern Irish trio, achieved precisely with “1977”. A title that's a treasure chest of memories (birth year of two Ash, of Star Wars, of the boom of English punk rock), paired with lyrics steeped in naiveté and the symbols of an adolescence still in progress. The stylistic signature is built on power pop, punk, noise pop and melodic talent well above average (the singles “Kung Fu”, “Girl From Mars” and “Angel Interceptor” remain among the essentials of 1995), with Owen Morris's production saturating the sound (“Lose Control”) and layering the substance of new hits such as “Oh Yeah” and “Goldfinger” (both midtempo and muscular, both Top 10 hits). Wheeler's voice is weak, naive, yet these songs work best only when sung with that dreamy/subdued tone of his. Included by NME in 2013 among the 500 greatest albums of all time, “1977” is the summit of Ash's discography, as well as one of the cross-cutting symbols of britpop in its golden season. (M. Losi)

Strangelove – Love And Other Demons (Food/Parlophone, June 1996)

Falling within a stylistic spectrum anchored by the spikier side of Radiohead (although, according to Ed O'Brien, it was actually the latter who were influenced by the Bristol band during the 1993 Pop Is Dead tour) and by the dark/baroque Suede of the sophomore, Strangelove are one of the most compelling and underrated presences on the britpop scene. “Love And Other Demons” (No. 44 in the UK) highlights their merits with a flawless tracklist: modern dances of technological post-glam (“Living With The Human Machines”, “20th Century Cold”), epic ballads elevated by Patrick Duff's maudit vocals (“Sway”, “She's Everywhere”), schizoid theatricality (“Spiders And Flies”), a folk fragment of alien beauty (“1432”), and the ceremonial “The Sea Of Black”, which cradles us in its waves for eight dense minutes. Anderson and Oakes guest on backing vocals on two tracks, and even the single “Beautiful Alone” seems to have the right feel for theairplay, but sales disappoint. The following self-titled album, with more upbeattones, marks the end of the band. (M. Losi)

Jack – Pioneer Soundtracks (Too Pure, June 1996)

“Pioneer Soundtracks” has always been a cult favorite for the few: as beloved by critics as it was snubbed by an audience that could well have appreciated it, it alternates nods to Scott Walker (“Filthy Names”), talkin Gainsbourg-esque spoken word mixed with beats reminiscent ofkraut (“Of Lights”), temi da spy film scores (“Biography Of A First Son”). In short, it makes its own many cultural totems that marked a generation. Listening back to the album, though, this writer's attention was captured especially by the instrumental tail of “Dress You In The Morning”, and not only for the intrinsic beauty of its crescendo and the dazzling violins poised between classical embroidery and dissonance. What was most striking was realizing, through this specific detail, the production care poured into a record that was certainly never conceived to break into the mainstream. Worth rediscovering, if only out of nostalgia for an era when the thriving music business and enterprising management allowed anyone with great ideas to express them to their fullest potential. (G. Rivoira)

Suede – Coming Up (Nude Records, September 1996)

This is the story of how former "loser" Brett Anderson grew tired of watching the triumphs of Blur, Pulp and Oasis from the sidelines, and reclaimed his rightful place in the Britpop Pantheon. So here come the catchy (did someone say "Beautiful Ones"?), shimmering sounds, neon keyboards ( new entry Neil Codling), strings déco, in a sound sound never so ambiguous, at once phosphorescent and purulent. Guitarist Richard Oakes starts out from Butler's style but pushes its expressive dryness and abrasive timbre to the extreme, even venturing into unprecedented harmonic progressions ("Filmstar"). In doing so, he backs Anderson, here the bard of a "trash generation" living day to day, trying to escape without quite knowing from what, attempting to soothe the void with all-too-ordinary remedies ("Saturday Night"). By celebrating his own colourful, decadent "common people", complacent yet resigned to the provincialism they've been condemned to, Anderson gets his revenge and achieves both artistic and commercial triumph (No. 1 in the UK, a million and a half copies sold worldwide). (M. Losi)

Kula Shaker – K (Columbia Records, September 1996)

Whether out of superficiality or because listeners were swept up by the immediacy of the anthems that defined it, when people talk about Britpop, the technical calibre of its musicians is never given enough credit. In this respect, few bands displayed a mastery of their instruments as uncommon as Kula Shaker, live included. After all, Crispian Mills and co. never hid their devotion to the incendiary spirit of bands like Deep Purple, Grateful Dead (paid tribute with the near-homonymous tenth track on this album) or Led Zeppelin. Veteran producer John Leckie helped the band bring their formula fully up to date, blending dance/Madchester rhythms with shimmering Brit guitars. Driven by the acrobatic "Hey Dude" and the Indian infatuations of "Tattva" and "Govinda" (the latter sung entirely in Sanskrit), “K” debuted at number one on the chart of Albion, stealing the title of fastest selling record from Elastica's debut, in the frantic race of a golden era that seemed like it would never end. (G. Rivoira)

1997

The rising Tony Blair, an MP since 1983 but still young enough to strike a chord with the younger generations thrilled by the exploits of the new British rock, wins the election on May 2nd and brings the Labour party back to government after almost two decades. Symbolic moments of his rise within the youth culture of the time are his speech at the '96 Brit Awards, and the post-election party on July 30th '97, boycotted by an already skeptical Damon Albarn, but attended by, among others, Noel Gallagher and Alan McGee. The latter campaigned fervently in support of the Labour candidate, creating the Youth Student Rally, an evolution of Rock The Vote, to raise awareness among young voters, and donating 50,000 pounds to the Scottish Labour Party. From the very start, however, the actions of the Blair government seem to forget the countercultural needs that helped it climb to power.

In many ways, '97 represents the last year able to churn out several major successes of the movement, or at least of its leading bands. "Urban Hymns" (September 29th) cements Verve"Word Gets Around" (August 25th) does the same for Stereophonics, "Marchin' Already" (September 15th) for Ocean Colour Scene, "Tellin' Stories" (September 21st) revives Charlatans, all while Oasis consolidate their triumph with "Be Here Now" (August 21st), and Blur and Radiohead overhaul their sound respectively with their self-titled album (February 10th) and with “Ok Computer” (May 21st).

In this plethora of chart-topping classics there's also room for Mansun, outsiders art rock that surprisingly break through to the top of the chart thanks to their “Attack Of The Grey Lantern” (February 17th). (G. Rivoira)

Mansun – Attack Of The Grey Lantern (Parlophone, February 1997)

Released just like that, out of nowhere. As if by magic. Of course that's a tall tale, but it captures well the impact the record had on those expecting yet another Shed Seven-style band. Among the peaks of britpop and the entire 90s British scene, the album finds Paul Draper grappling with an almost-concept – later abandoned, as our man had in the meantime grown tired of the storyline – halfway between fantasy and amused social critique. Given, however, that “the lyrics aren’t supposed to mean that much”, what truly leaves one dumbfounded is a scenario where progressive, synth-pop, art rock and who knows what else fuse together in an unprecedented way. From the opening “The Chad Who Loved Me” onward, you enter an “other” world, where the sum of every detail (production, composition, arrangements) generates a three-dimensional environment that's a joy to get lost in. Many listeners were struck by it (Thom Yorke among them), others were unsettled. Some even hated it. Either way, it's a record that was (and still is) hard to remain indifferent to. (M. Losi)

Blur – Blur (Food, February 1997)

The sheet-covered corpse glimpsed on the stretcher, swallowed by the ochre-yellow of the shot and dramatized by the blur, is a message addressed to the “old” Blur: “thank you for the use of your body, goodbye”. Anticipating the last phase of the Britpop movement, the “dark side” that would soon leave Cool Britannia in ruins, Albarn and co. open themselves up to that America they had until recently mocked, generating a hybrid between Britpop instincts and lo-fi stars and stripes. The sound turns livid, the atmospheres grow sinister (even the circus interlude “Theme From Retro” takes on expressionistic contours), while the ballads get drunk on alt-country (“Country Sad Ballad Man”) or dissolve into lo-fi dust of feeling (“You’re So Great”, a solo creation by Coxon). But that's not all: between echoes of Berlin-era Bowie, astral folk introspection, narcosis trip-hopthe post-2 Tone sabbath of “Death Of A Party”, noise-pop echoes and punk roughness, “Blur” oozes imagination from every single second without ever betraying the cohesion of the whole. The utmost fulfilment of the crisis. (M. Losi)

James – Whiplash (Mercury, February 1997)

By 1997, James were already veterans who had carved out a cult status in British indie between the Eighties and Nineties, landing runner-up chart positions with “Gold Mother” and “Seven” and even earning gold certification in the US thanks to “Laid”, produced by Brian Eno. Also conceived with Eno was the experimental “Wah Wah”, whose realization sparked fierce arguments between the band and their label and effectively killed off any chance of a rise in the American market for good. It was the sun-drenched “She’s A Star”, carried by Tim Booth's angelic falsetto, that finally brought James back into at least the UK top 10. Although marked by a somewhat schizophrenic flow (the tracklist ranges from Britpop to alt-dance excursions and a track in the style of Velvet Underground like “Blue Pastures”), the rest of “Whiplash” also delivers memorable moments. The highlight"Waltzing Along", vaguely Aor, "Homeboy", to which bands like Vaccines o Glasvegas owe an enormous debt, "Play Dead", where indie rock and big beat collide to great effect, and the epic opening charge of "Tomorrow". (G. Rivoira)

Gene – Drawn To The Deep End (Polydor, February 1997)

Led by Martin Rossiter, Gene were a cult band of Nineties British rock. When they emerged from the London underbelly, they immediately found support from the New Musical Express, which even founded a record label, Costermonger, with the sole purpose of promoting them. For a moment it actually seemed to work, and the band placed its first two studio albums in the top 10, before signing to Polydor, condemning themselves to obscurity (the major treated them with coldness and indifference). While on their debut, "Olympian" (1995), Gene did little more than imitate the Smiths through and through, this second studio effort saw their ambitions grow considerably. Not that the shadow of Morrissey and Marr had vanished ("We Could Be Kings"), but between progressive leanings (the opening "New Amusements") and rasping vocals over muscular guitars ("Fighting Fit"), Rossiter finally managed to show his own personality, giving the impression he could rival his own mentors. (F. Romagnoli)

My Life Story – The Golden Mile (Parlophone, March 1997)

The “chamber pop orchestra” assembled by singer/songwriter Jake Shillingford has been churning out perfectly cooked baroque pop since 1993. It's in '97, though, with "The Golden Mile", that the recipe reaches perfection. While the 12-member line-up seems to anticipate the “expanded” combos that would invade Canada a few years later, the music instead dives straight into the most British side of pop: a opening trotting along, all harpsichord-drenched, with an obsessive string figure and the listing of "12 Reasons Why I Love Her"; a nursery rhyme amid synths, trumpet, Gregorian chants and distorted guitars ("Strumpet"); delights halfway between Xtc and “girl group” idioms ("The King Of Kissingdom"); a taste for eccentric anthems ("Marriage Blister") and for moments that defy convention (the multifaceted "I Dive", the exotica oases of "Sparkle", the interweaving of synthetic flutes on "Claret" recalling traditional Andean music). Perhaps too refined to break into the upper reaches of the chart (No. 36 in the UK), yet still rich with reasons to be considered among the most ambitious artifacts of the era. (M. Losi)

Charlatans – Tellin' Stories (Beggar's Banquet, September 1997)

Two weeks at number one and three singles in the top 10. The greatest triumph of the career of the Charlatans, grabbed by hopping with perfect timing onto the britpop limousine, after having led the charge of Madchester from the front.

This is the legacy of "Tellin' Stories", yet the tormented recording sessions, which culminated in the tragic death in a car accident of the iconic keyboardist Rob Collins, threatened to bring the band's very story to an end. Luckily Burgess and co. held firm and catharticly delivered a powerful eleven-track set able to update their formula to the age of Oasis ("How High"), without losing any elegance (the title track). The change of genre didn't distort the band's soul, which in fact still offered up songs dominated by the Hammond organ ("North Country Boy", "Only Teethin"), continued the flirtation with American culture inaugurated on the previous record (the echoes of country of "You're A Big Girl Now"), and vented its dance streak in numbers like "Area 51" and "One To Another".(G. Rivoira)

Super Furry Animals – Radiator (Creation, September 1997)

The Welsh band Super Furry Animals, led by the histrionic Gruff Rhys, were a band gifted with an out-of-the-ordinary imagination, though perhaps worn down by the urge to release anything they recorded, as shown by the nine albums put out in thirteen years, not counting the avalanche of EPs and B-sides. On at least two occasions they nevertheless managed to bring the picture into focus and release records destined to mark that era of British rock: in 1997, with “Radiator”, and four years later, with "Rings Around The World". The first in particular is an exhilarating, ramshackle string of inventions and contradictions: anthems of the most communal britpop ("The International Language Of Screaming"), pounding postmodern psychedelia ("Hermann Loves Pauline"), garage rock with Beach Boys-style choruses ("Chupacabras"), folk ballad with electric outbursts ("Down A Different River") and whatever else you can think of. Here and there hints of art rock emerge, if not outright prog: just think of the performance Rhys's vocals on "Play It Cool" and "Demons", one step away from Peter Gabriel the most theatrical. (F. Romagnoli)

Verve – Urban Hymns (Virgin, September 1997)

I Verve went from the underground to the mainstream overnight, with a leap so sudden it strained the band's already fragile internal workings. Within a year, guitarist Nick McCabe would pack his bags, ditching the band mid-way through their American tour. It's hard to say anything that hasn't already been said about an album that made history, selling more than ten million copies worldwide. The iconic voice of Richard Ashcroft, four hugely famous singles ("Bitter Sweet Symphony", "The Drugs Don't Work", "Lucky Man", "Sonnet"), a legendary controversy (the Rolling Stones who, in a fit of dishonesty and greed, over a sample, demanded 100% of the royalties for writing "Bitter Sweet Symphony"), and a stylish stylistic quest blending radio-friendly pop-rock, chamber orchestrations, psychedelic guitar reveries and sporadic keyboard incursions. Production duties were split between Youth, for the tracks aimed at the mass audience, and Chris Potter, for the more experimental cuts. (F. Romagnoli)

1998

"Do you want a line of this? Are you a socialist?". 1998 is the year of definitive disillusionment with New Labour, and the ever-sharp Jarvis Cocker, with "Cocaine Socialism", B-sides off "A Little Soul", launches an attack as stylish as it is scathing on the British prime minister. The same frontman of Pulp had in fact been proposed as spokesperson for the Youth Student Rally (a proposal that was, needless to say, turned down from the outset). Tony Blair, in the immediate post-election euphoria, had raised great expectations of an economic revival for the British music industry, even suggesting McGee and Richard Branson as heads of a task force set up to stimulate musical creativity through subsidies and dedicated training courses.

Nothing will come of all this, however; in fact, a series of measures such as the Welfare To Work Scheme and the Teaching And Higher Educational Bill sparks a chorus of protest from various musicians (among others Bobby Gillespie, Richard McNamara, Chemical Brothers and Damon Albarn), including in the 14 March issue of NME (the accompanying article unmistakably features the word "betrayed").

This chain of events is reflected in the year's record output, where britpop struggles to dominate the chart (with the exception of James with the already-mentioned "Best Of", the Manic Street Preachers with the bestseller "This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours" and the energetic "International Velvet" by Catatonia). The movement takes on a generally more downcast tone, well represented by albums such as "This Is Hardcore" by Pulp (30 March), "Six" by Mansun (7 September) and "Without You I'm Nothing" by the Placebo (12 October): the second of these in particular marks a sharp halt to its creators' commercial ambitions. (G. Rivoira-M. Losi)

Space – Tin Planet (Gut Records, March 1998)

The brief but blazing run of Liverpool's Space produced two albums that made the British top 5 between 1996 and 1998. "Tin Planet" is the second, the most eclectic and unabashedly pop of the two. The band revolved around a core of Tommy Scott (vocals), Jamie Murphy (guitar) and Franny Griffiths (keyboards), and favoured a sound considerably less muscular than the genre's average. The guitars were consistently polished and kept in check even when distorted, the vocals refined and often sweetened by harmonious backing choruses, while the keyboards drew on cocktail-bar sonorities paired with orchestrations straight out of an old spy movie. Britpop was never as close to lounge pop and old-school easy listening as it is on this record, and it's no surprise that one of the singles is titled "The Ballad Of Tom Jones" (featuring Cerys Matthews of Catatonia, duetting with Scott on a ruthless inverted love song, in which the couple risk killing each other). (F. Romagnoli)

Pulp – This Is Hardcore (Island Records, March 1998)

The dazzle of “Different Class” blinds everyone, perhaps even the band itself, which returns with a new album only after two and a half years. Intimate, melancholy and insistently leaden, “This Is Hardcore” catches the audience off guard. The band had always experimented with darker material, but it's another thing entirely to stitch together a full hour of shadows, self-pity, morbidity and torment, without ever letting up. The record's backbone is made up of electroacoustic ballads like “Dishes” and “Help The Aged”, but the peak comes in the moments where the creativity veers off into uncharted territory, like the blend of downtempo and lounge in “Seductive Barry” or the decadent funk of “Party Hard”. Then there's the title trackimposing symphonic art rock where Jarvis Cocker hits one of his interpretive peaks, narrating the disillusionment of the lower-middle class through the metaphorical tale of a homemade erotic film. His voice soars up until it cracks awkwardly, then dips down into Walker-esquetones, in a melting pot of shades. (F. Romagnoli)

Rialto – Rialto (China Records, July 1998)

Too often accused of having debuted far too late and of being a faded copy of Pulp, Louis Eliot's band actually holds more than one surprise in store for britpop fans and beyond. The 1960s English sound of Kinks, Small Faces, Hollies, Pretty Things etc. has never sounded as expansive and epic as it does on this record (no small contribution comes from the presence of not one but two drummers). Pulp's influence, present as it is, doesn't amount to a superficial reliance on their aesthetic, but rather serves as the necessary vehicle for updating a sneakily multifaceted formula, one able to display, within a coherent whole, girl group hooks (“Untouchable”), lyricism Morricone-esque (“Monday Morning 5:19”), walls of guitars just a step away from shoegaze filigree (“Hard Candy”), and caressing chamber pop (“Love Like Semtex”). “Rialto” landed just outside the British top 20, but unfortunately the band failed to build on that level of success and split up in 2002. (G. Rivoira)

Puressence – Only Forever (Island Records, August 1998)

Now erased from the memory of the British public, though sustained by a strange, fervent cult following in Greece, Puressence probably deserved more commercially. Especially considering that the singer, James Mudriczki, at least in the moments when he avoids roughening up his tone, impressively anticipates Matt Bellamy of Muse (although it comes across free of his more mawkish excesses). The music is a refined yet forceful take on alternative rock, with galloping bass lines, dramatic orchestral surges and majestic electric guitars, all brought into sharp focus by star producer Mike Hedges, years earlier a guiding light for much of British post-punk. The formula works both in the atmospheric moments ("Standing In Your Shadow", "All I Want") and in the more aggressive tracks (which, truth be told, make up most of the tracklist, starting right from the opener, "Sharpen Up The Knives"). (F. Romagnoli)

Mansun – Six (Parlophone, September 1998)

You make an album that's wildly multifaceted and, through some fortunate twist of fate, score a chart-topping success. Anyone else would have ridden the wave and smoothed out their sound. Not Paul Draper, not Mansun. Built with an intricate, almost obsessive cut & paste approach more suited to the Logic Pro era than to the Nineties, still straddling analogue and digital, this grandiose commercial suicide stands as, among other things, the progressive high point of Cool Britannia. Odd time signatures, harpsichords, lyrical and narrative vocals, romantic piano sections, mini-suites that never return to their starting point, studio manipulation of every kind (the dozen or so different vocal filters on the title track), it's no exaggeration to say that rarely in rock history has such an ambitious, deranged, alienated work been assembled. To add a further surprise, the final result feels much more "played" than the debut, thanks to Rathbone's furious drumming, Chad's brilliant tonal experiments, and Draper's glam-soul vibrato. (G. Rivoira)

Placebo – Without You I'm Nothing (Hut Recordings/Virgin, October 1998)

Reviews from the time are full of references to David Bowie (one of his admirers), Lou Reed, urban urban and so on. Nothing wrong with that, after all. Leaving aside “Pure Morning” (No. 4 in the UK, complete with an iconic video), an added "technological" art-rock mantra last minute opening the setlist, “Without You I’m Nothing” is a stylish darkening of Placebo-sound, here steered towards even bleaker shores. Whether it's a burst of pop electricity where the sonic youth dialogues with British wave (“You Don’t Care About Us”, “Every You Every Me”), or skeletal ballads veiled by ghostly arpeggios (“Ask For Answers”), not to mention full-blown gothic litanies reeking of slashed wrists (“My Sweet Prince”, “The Crawl”), the agenda allows for no let-up and no glimmers of light. And while in the studio it's bassist/multi-instrumentalist Stefan Olsdal who proves decisive, under the spotlight it's him, Brian Molko. Increasingly less glam, the androgynous frontman embodies here the goth version (and why not “emo”?) of britpop, confirming himself as one of the most polarizing figures around. (M. Losi)

1999

This is the last year in which one can reasonably still speak of britpop, and if we compare the commercial results of debut bands still committed to carrying that aesthetic forward against those of 1995-1996, a marked decline is evident.

It is instead the year in which the winds of a post-brit wave blow strongly - brief, yet capable of spawning a handful of bands with extraordinary and lasting popular success.

The perfect watershed between the two eras is “The Man Who” by Travis (24 May), whose introspective moods pave the way for a trend we'll return to further down.

That the britpop race was drawing to a close is in any case well attested by the changes undergone by its two historic bands, Blur and Suede: for all they had in common in terms of their singers' dicey narcotic habits (read: “heroin”), both bands prove sharp enough to sense a shift in climate that had by then become irreversible. Damon Albarn and co. release their most noise album yet, “13” (15 March), while “Head Music” (28 April) marks Suede's electro turn. Both records top the charts, though over time “Head Music” has come to be talked about as something of a failure. Nothing could be further from the truth: on the contrary, it's a fine record, at times the end-of-millennium answer to the Tubeaway Army, at times as sweet and sunny as Anderson's band had never been before (“She’s In Fashion”).

Those who choose to develop their own vision without upending it, like Kula Shaker produced by the legendary Bob Ezrin (“Peasant, Pigs And Astronauts”, 8 March) or Supergrass (self-titled album, 20 September), fail to replicate their previous commercial glories. (G. Rivoira)

Ultrasound – Everything Picture (Nude, April 1999)

A mammoth double CD of mammoth britpop shot through with space rock/glam veins, courtesy of a band that boasts, in the mammoth Tiny Wood, a frontman charismatic/off-the-wall frontman, and in guitarist Richard Green, a songwriter thoroughbred. "Gary Glitter's gone to seed, so who will save us now?" Wood asks in his theatrical, screechy voice on the closest thing to a hit, "Stay Young" (produced by Nigel Godrich, No. 30 in the chart), while bassist Vanessa Best's counter-vocals reach stratospheric heights and the whole sonic mass seems on the verge of collapse (it will, rest assured: the 39 minutes of the title track are undeniable proof of that). Despite mostly negative reviews, the album lands at a decent No. 23 in the charts. But it's the band itself that pulls the plug, splitting up shortly after due to internal tensions and consigning to (relative) oblivion this melodic mess of spaceykeyboards, booming guitars, the aforementioned interplay between Wood and Best (the latter being the Clare Torry of the Brit generation) and assorted sonic oddities (the motorik pulse of "Suckle"). (M. Losi)

Travis – The Man Who (Independiente, May 1999)

On the front of intrinsic quality it's a close call with the follow-up “The Invisible Band”, but when it comes to relevance there's no contest: “The Man Who” (nine weeks at the top of the chart, more than two and a half million copies sold in the UK alone) is the epitome both of the sound that made the Glasgow band famous, and of the veiled passing of the Britpop era, with the consequent reshuffling of Albion's pop scene along different coordinates (read: “Coldplay”). The greyish tones of the cover are a fitting visual complement to the semi-acoustic tracks, with theirappeal immediate, understated, barely grazed by a shiver of electricity, produced with care by the “Midas Touch” himself, Nigel Godrich. There's no shortage of finesse in the arrangements (the sitar on “The Last Laugh Of The Laughter”, the strings on the little march “Why Does It Always Rain On Me?”, the harmonica on “Luv”), and Fran Healy's pen is often effective in sketching a sense of inner desolation, of an era coming to an end. Just four years earlier, Damon Albarn was hamming it up on the podium at the Brit Awards with his haul of five statuettes. Four years, yet it feels like an eternity has passed. (M. Losi)

Gay Dad – Leisure Noise (London Records, June 1999)

After several years as a music journalist, Cliff Jones decided to jump the fence and form his own band. Gay Dad were a shooting star of late Britpop: their fame lasted just long enough to see the single “To Earth With Love” poke into the top 10, before vanishing altogether. Which, of course, takes nothing away from the quality of this debut album, whose only flaw lies in the tracklist sequencing: for some reason, after a splendid opening with the Charlatans-esque pop of “Dimstar”, the band placed “Joy!” and “Oh Jim”, two somewhat rowdy guitar rockers, right after it, risking giving a wholly misleading idea of what the record is actually about. That would be a shame, because the rest travels along different lines, amid shifting hybrids of glam and space rock (“To Earth With Love”), choral college rock (“My Son Mystic”), pop with hypnotic kraut rhythms (“Black Ghost”), and ethereal ballads with psychedelic codas (“Different Kind Of Blue”). Needless to say, nobody would notice the second album, “Transmission” (2001). (F. Romagnoli)

Let’s all meet up in the year 2000

It's now well established that Cool Britannia wasn't nearly as carefree as it's often portrayed; on the contrary, it was yet another attempt by rock music to overturn the status quo, to bring the demands of the excluded into the spotlight, to claim its own place in the world. That it didn't seek some utopian spiritual liberation through drug use (though its musicians made heavy use of them regardless) as the hippie movement did, or in a different way the rave scene did, that it didn't set entire cities ablaze as the punks did, that it never screamed its rage the way grunge did, matters little: the intent was the same. And although the modus operandi might seem less romantic, coming to terms with the system in order to actively change it from within seemed, for a moment, like an achievable utopia.

It's therefore clear that a rift opened up between the end of the Nineties and the early 2000s, between the Britpop bands and those that came immediately after them — bands seemingly linked by an indie-branded, guitar-dominated sound, but in reality profoundly different. Bands like Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Doves, Gomez, Muse found their inspiration instead in intimism, in introversion, or simply in more classically sentimental territory.

Even from a musical standpoint, on closer inspection, the links are more superficial than substantial: Coldplay's “Parachutes” can be summed up as “Radiohead's ‘The Bends’, but with strumming guitars like Oasis”, Snow Patrol carry some echoes of Placebo's darker britpop, while Muse themselves initially drew, with less finesse, on the more epic and prog side of britpop (Puressence, Mansun). In every one of these bands, however, there's a clear sense that we're dealing with a generation that represents something else entirely - one that lists britpop among its influences, but which didn't actually produce it by amalgamating thirty years of prior music, as the major exponents of the brit generation had done. A common process, whenever a paradigm shift occurs.

Speaking of the genre's major exponents, the end of an era proved a hard blow for many of them to absorb: Suede, Pulp, Mansun and Elastica all split up between 2001 and 2003, after releasing albums that met with modest public response (though Pulp's "We Love Life", produced by Scott Walker, is nonetheless well worth revisiting). The Gallagher brothers, for their part, kept racking up commercial hits, having by then joined the pantheon of international pop-rock royalty, but they never regained the effortless, instantly gripping songcraft of their golden years. Some, like Luke Haines, managed to shake off their past and start a new chapter with a new band, Black Box Recorder, delivering a fine, delicate blend of dream-pop and electroacoustic singer-songwriter fare with "The Facts Of Life". Then there were Radiohead and Damon Albarn, who with the release of "Kid A" and the first album by Gorillaz delivered the final, decisive blow to their own past and to the whole movement.

This doesn't mean that the legacy of Blur, Suede, Pulp and the rest went unclaimed; on the contrary, it's clearly traceable in numerous acts that marked out British indie between the mid-2000s and the mid-2010s, for instance in Arctic Monkeys, especially in their early London incarnation, or in White Lies (tellingly produced by Ed Buller, a key figure of the English 90s), or again in artists like Patrick Wolf, heir to the dandy spirit that infected so many showmen in the Nineties.

Britpop's will to power and its media pervasiveness were, however, so intensely felt and so significant that they could never be fully replicated: to this day, there's been no further British invasion of such magnitude, and it's actually with a tinge of melancholy that people look back on those years, when compared with the fragmented state of contemporary Albion. (G. Rivoira)

Appendix – Aesthetics and Video

Partly by virtue of being a more or less direct descendant of glam e new wave, britpop was one of the most theatrical and colourful genres of its time. Its aesthetic character also happened to coincide with the peak years of MTV, at least in Europe, closely tying it to the art of the music video.

Britpop's most famous video is undoubtedly the one for "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by the Verve, in which Richard Ashcroft walks down a London pavement, caught somewhere between vacant and arrogant, repeatedly barging into passers-by. It's no exaggeration to call it the most iconic video of the entire Nineties.

Despite the musical distance between the two bands, the Verve stand alongside Oasis as the most representative face of so-called "laddism" — that British subculture in which young men demanded a reclaiming of their masculinity through the celebration of the worst aspects of working-class life: arrogance, drinking, mateyness, contempt for sensitivity. In the Verve, this celebration was actually kept in check, showing through only in their scruffy look, and while the video for “Bitter Sweet Symphony” might raise a few doubts, it's worth remembering that these are still the authors of “The Drugs Don't Work,” in which Ashcroft's addiction is laid bare as a weakness that makes him feel guilty towards his partner.

Oasis, on the other hand, had no such restraint, and are remembered for some of the movement's most regrettable moments, culminating in the appalling wish for Blur frontman Damon Albarn to die of AIDS. Oasis are probably the reason why, in Britain, many still associate “laddism” with britpop, when in fact that attitude was only expressed by a minority within the movement.

Suede, for instance, had no trouble putting their sensitivity on display and shunning machismo, with Brett Anderson describing himself as potentially bisexual and drummer Simon Gilbert an out gay man. Anderson's androgynous voice and the band's decadent look are cited almost unanimously by critics as the main reason for the band's lack of success in the United States (though a rather clumsy management should also be factored in). The band has many iconic videos that play on their sexually ambiguous aesthetic, with settings ranging from the bleak post-apocalyptic guerrilla warfare of “We Are The Pigs” to the dreamlike transfiguration of the London Underground in “Saturday Night”.

Pulp offered a kind of bridge between the two extremes: refined, glam and glittering, yet they found in their frontman, Jarvis Cocker, a hero of male romantic narrative and of the middle-class perspective, at least for British alternative culture. Their scenic grandeur reached its peak in 1998, with the video for “This Is Hardcore”, a recreation of an old Hollywood film set, complete with every stereotype of noir, musical and melodrama. Jarvis Cocker ends the video surrounded by dancers brushing him with colored ostrich feathers.

The video for their most famous song, “Common People”, has also stuck in the British collective imagination, standing for that whole strand of videos set - wholly or partly - in a supermarket, in a kind of celebration/mockery of mass consumerism (worth recalling, on this point, are also Radiohead's “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Inbetweener” by Sleeper).

The cinematic quotationism of Pulp's videos was obviously not an isolated case. Stereotypes drawn from classic Anglo-American cinema recur frequently in that era, leading to several black-and-white videos, such as “Daydreamer” by Menswear, with its interplay of light and its dreamlike framing. The references to the classic 1945 psychological horror film “Dead Of Night” (Ealing Studios) are evident, right down to the puppet with the diabolical stare.

Also in black and white is Mansun's best video, the one for “Negative”, with a dry, sexually charged edge, likely inspired by the various “new waves” of European cinema straddling the Fifties and Sixties.

Directors like Kubrick and Tarkovsky, on the other hand, lie behind all those videos set in sterile, futuristic-looking spaces, such as “The Universal” by Blur and “If You Tolerate This…” by Manic Street Preachers.

The aesthetic evolution of the latter was among the most interesting of the movement. The band emerged in a context that didn't yet know the term “britpop” and, according to many, remained detached from it for several years, looking mainly to American hard rock and alternative rock. And yet, listening today to their anthem “Motorcycle Emptyness”, released in early 1992, the distance from the britpop that would soon follow doesn't seem all that great. The ideological coordinates were set by guitarist Richey Edwards, who could in fact barely play and served mainly as the band's lyricist. It was under his radical, antagonistic push that, in June 1994, the quartet appeared on Top Of The Pops singing “Faster” dressed as IRA militants, sparking a media firestorm — one that, incidentally, did nothing to help their sales.

Having tragically lost Edwards, the Manics softened their sound , but not their stances: the aforementioned “If You Tolerate This…” is one of the starkest anti-war songs around, at least among those with radio-friendly appeal, and its lyrics draw phrases and slogans from the era of the Spanish Civil War.

The band that, more than any other, tied its work to the use of symbols, setting itself apart from every britpop subcurrent, was Kula Shaker. Their name, taken from alvar Kulasekhara, one of the most important poets and saints of southern India, immediately reveals leader Crispian Mills's interest in Hinduism and mysticism, far removed from passing fads: Mills remains a devout Hindu to this day and takes part in some of the most important themed festivals in Europe.

Their work is steeped in references to Indian religion, from lyrics to album covers, immersed to such a degree that the young Mills seemingly couldn't tell when it was time to stop. In April 1997 the band was in fact swept up in a fierce controversy following Mills's comments on the swastika, which he described as "a brilliant image." His words were taken out of context, since Mills was referring to the symbol's meaning within Hinduism, yet it wasn't hard to see that in Western culture it's no longer possible to separate the swastika from Nazism, no matter what context one tries to frame it in. Mills's remark was a full-blown media gaffe, born of naivety and probably of an excess of enthusiasm for a subject that had completely absorbed him. It should nonetheless be noted that the singer would later clarify that he abhorred all the meanings the swastika has taken on in the West and that he was firmly opposed to any far-right values.

Among the band's most striking videos is the one for the single "Mystical Machine Gun" (from the underrated second album, "Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts"), a kind of staged Ballardianscenario. Set in a futuristic backdrop, it features a cast of upper-crust socialites who end up turning on each other in an animalistic frenzy that strips away their veneer of formal perfection. (F. Romagnoli)

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28/02/2026

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Federico Romagnoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

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Miscellaneous

Stories and songs from Cool Britannia

Post-britpop: fresh perspectives on a scene in the shadows

Thirty years of flings and endless love affairs

News

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See all

Discography

Recommended Discography

Blur - Popscene [single] (1992)
Denim - Back In Denim (1992)

Auteurs - New Wave (1993)

Suede - Suede (1993)

Blur - Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993)
Suede - Stay Together [single] (1994)

Pulp - His 'n' Hers (1994)

Blur - Parklife (1994)

These Animal Men - Too Sussed (1994)

Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible (1994)

Suede - Dog Man Star (1994)

Dodgy - Homegrown (1994)

Elastica - Elastica (1995)

Radiohead - The Bends (1995)

Supergrass - I Should Coco (1995)

Oasis - (What’s the story) Morning Glory? (1995)

Menswear - Nuisance (1995)

Pulp - Different Class (1995)

Marion - This World And Body (1996)

The Divine Comedy - Casanova (1996)

Ash - 1977 (1996)

Strangelove - Love And Other Demons (1996)

Jack - Pioneer Soundtracks (1996)

Suede - Coming Up (1996)

Kula Shaker - K (1996)
Super Furry Animals - The Man Don't Give A Fuck [singolo] (1996)

Mansun - Attack Of The Grey Lantern (1997)

Blur - Blur (1997)

James - Whiplash (1997)

Gene - Drawn To The Deep End (1997)

My Life Story - The Golden Mile (1997)

Charlatans - Tellin' Stories (1997)

Super Furry Animals - Radiator (1997)

Verve - Urban Hymns (1997)

Space - Tin Planet (1998)

Pulp - This Is Hardcore (1998)

Rialto - Rialto (1998)

Puressence - Only Forever (1998)

Mansun - Six (1998)

Placebo - Without You I’m Nothing (1998)

Ultrasound - Everything Picture (1999)

Travis - The Man Who (1999)

Gay Dad - Leisure Noise (1999)

Recommended videos

Blur - Popscene (1992)
Auteurs - Lenny Valentino (1993)
Pulp - Lipgloss (1993)
Suede - So Young (1993)
Blur - Girls & Boys (1994)