I disagree, I think Britpop tells a realistic appraisal of the 90’s. After the carnage and upheaval of Thatcherism throughout the 80’s, there was hope and optimism that things were looking up. Blair’s election was one of (unfortunately misplaced) optimism.
I think the mix of Oasis’ dreaming of escape and hedonism combined with the cynicism of Blur sums up the British psyche perfectly, always dreaming that things will come good without ever really believing they will, a kind of hopeful pessimism born from a millennium of rigid class systems
I disagree, the real carnage was the 70’s. It was Thatcher who didn’t just dream, but acted to make things “come good”. Britpop singularly failed to recognise this.
Some reforms were necessary but let’s not pretend what she did was anything special. Despite a North Sea oil boom, billions raised from selling off the country’s utilities and housing stock plus the bonus of women entering the full time workforce in great numbers for the first time, her economic record was still simply two large recessions with a boom in the middle with average growth of only 2% a year.
There was genuine optimism in the 90’s once she was toppled, it replaced the anger of the 80’s and Britpop reflected this more hopeful, chirpier outlook
Although they came out in the mid-noughties I think The Streets accurately captured the convergence of Brit-pop and rave, but also marked its end: Blinded By The Lights, terribly dark, but quintessentially British.
Genuine optimism in the 90s? Presumably you missed the ERM debacle, the house repo’s, the long long Major years of things just not getting better or going anywhere positive at all, Tory sleaze…
So yes, Blair got a landslide…and was almost worse…catastrophic war, pensions wrecked by Brown, extension of the Tory public/private partnership…
Yes it all went swimmingly…but even worse was to come…Cameron and his successors…
She made some things better, the economy was a complete mess and needed reform.
However, there is no doubt that some areas of ‘traditional’ Britain were devastated by rapid deindustrialisation. Also, small C conservative herself has a blind spot for what much less travelled economic liberalism would bring in its wake..
Graeme Archer
9 days ago
I’m a little puzzled by the slightly negative tone of the piece, which at the same time details the quite specific artistry of Damon Albarn. He *is* a very talented artist, and his music reflects that- as the author describes. (I think it’s wrong to lump Albarn, some Suede and some Pulp into the same bag as Oasis, who were/are simply dreadful; unmusical; not-art.) I have zero memory of Albarn hiding the fact that he was “lower-middle bohemian” [many of us from the lower-middle class walked the same late 90s path; it was fun, so long as you stayed the right side of Jarvis Cocker’s famously common line, and oh heavens did Hackney heave with people who didn’t]; he often talked about it in interviews, so the charge cannot be hypocrisy (would we accuse Orwell of the same?). I really enjoyed the essay and the writer has a gift, but I’ll need to re-read I think, because I feel I’m slightly missing Nicholas’s point. If I had to summarise a single “point” about Blur, it would be that the majestic (cockney, and Albarn’s family are authentic Essex post-war overspill) knees-up can co-exist – must co-exist? – with a melancholic sense of loss (and, corollary, there’s always a morning-after price to pay for hedonism). Surely this is something that any Tory innately understands, at a near-genetic level? (Irony alert: the drummer is famously a committed Labour activist and candidate at the next election!) Thanks for this piece and the space to spill out reactions!
Actually I think Nicholas is saying that Blur were satirising the 90s’ culture. To an *extent* I agree, but they were also celebrating it. Isn’t that what an artist attempts? To look clearly and describe? (Walthamstow Dogs is – I was going to say “long gone”, but to those of us who were in our late 20s when Blur were peaking, it doesn’t feel like long ago at all, and the passing of that specific timebound culture – destroyed by Blair- is to be regretted.) The mid-80s to the late-90s were the best time to be alive in the 20th C, and nothing in the 21st has yet made me recalibrate.
Oasis: “dreadful, unmusical, not art” isn’t worth critiquing. Blur/Albarn (as the author notes) are more London-centric “music hall”, redolent of the typical post-yuppie complacency than anything else.
Quite simply, people will remember and still be playing Oasis when Blur are no longer even a blur.
I agree, I think this depressing article and much of the comments might be over analysing with hindsight the fact that some young musicians got together and made some great music whatever your (anybody’s) personal tastes are. Anyone that can write a song and play it live is good – give it a go! They just happened to be around at the time of new politics and new marketing and another, regular, cultural phase. Those are different topics to analyse if you wish but It’s not necessary to denigrate the artists as the article does.
Blur were more talented but you are much too harsh on Oasis imho. I think it’s true that many people preferred their anthemic music to the slightly pretentious art school Blur offering, even if the latter was more innovative at its best.
Andrew Vanbarner
8 days ago
She studied sculpture at St Martin’s college …..
Allison Barrows
8 days ago
Whatever. I’ll enjoy my crush on Damon for the rest of my life. Whoo hoo!
NIGEL PASSMORE
6 days ago
To be able to write anything of experienced based value on Brit-pop or the early nineties you now need to be at least 45 or better 50 plus. I’m not sure what age the writer is but this piece reads like it was written by someone who has studied the period but wasn’t actually there. It is riddled with cliches that anyone who lived in Britain in that decade (myself Edinburgh and London) wouldn’t recognise. I was both a university student and city worker and married in to a blue collar working class family. So I saw a pretty broad spectrum of Britsh life, and I don’t recognise the picture painted here.
What I would say is:
– Brit-pop was a relatively small UK Flash in the pan musical movement that nobody I Iknow of my age celebrates
– Cool-Britannia was a puff illusion created by Master Charlatan the Blair Creature reflected at the 2012 London Olympics by the Heir to Blair.
– Thatchers’ Britain was for the vast majority a time of energy, possibilities, opportunity and hope. The 90s with Blair, Clinton and Social Media reversed all that and is the root cause of the complete mess the Western World is in today with Globalist Technocrats (I mean the Adults in the Room) at the helm.
Regards
NHP
Tyler Durden
9 days ago
All Blur and Oasis did was reproduce anti-aesthetic representations of the south and north of England for the benefits of marketeers, particularly to target the student market with its enormous growth in numbers.
But aesthetically, this was surprisingly easy to ignore as the 80s and 90s were a golden period for English independent pop music. New genres were invented that were embraced by the artistic world rather than the reheated 60s pop of Blur and the pub rock of the Gallagher brothers.
Blur had some good songs though, even Oasis did at the start (though Pulp were better than either IMO). Both were popular in the working class town I grew up in.
Pop music has never been ideologically pure! Motown, for example. Bands constantly wanting to “break America”. Etc.
Adam Huntley
8 days ago
I still can’t forgive Blur for shamelessly ripping off Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit in the supposedly ironic Song 2. Surely one of the the greatest crimes in pop history
A greater irony is that all the Britpoppers seem to be doing alright still whereas many of their grunge brethren died horrible heroin deaths despite making better music
Probably because Britpop had a more cheery outlook. Even the ones deriding the living conditions at the time had an element of hopefulness and escapism about it. Grunge was simply wallowing in self pity (although I did like Nirvana)
I disagree, I think Britpop tells a realistic appraisal of the 90’s. After the carnage and upheaval of Thatcherism throughout the 80’s, there was hope and optimism that things were looking up. Blair’s election was one of (unfortunately misplaced) optimism.
I think the mix of Oasis’ dreaming of escape and hedonism combined with the cynicism of Blur sums up the British psyche perfectly, always dreaming that things will come good without ever really believing they will, a kind of hopeful pessimism born from a millennium of rigid class systems
I disagree, the real carnage was the 70’s. It was Thatcher who didn’t just dream, but acted to make things “come good”. Britpop singularly failed to recognise this.
Some reforms were necessary but let’s not pretend what she did was anything special. Despite a North Sea oil boom, billions raised from selling off the country’s utilities and housing stock plus the bonus of women entering the full time workforce in great numbers for the first time, her economic record was still simply two large recessions with a boom in the middle with average growth of only 2% a year.
There was genuine optimism in the 90’s once she was toppled, it replaced the anger of the 80’s and Britpop reflected this more hopeful, chirpier outlook
What this article fails to take account of is also rave culture which was arguably a bigger thing than britpop, and had more of an impact
Although they came out in the mid-noughties I think The Streets accurately captured the convergence of Brit-pop and rave, but also marked its end: Blinded By The Lights, terribly dark, but quintessentially British.
Absolutely- the Streets underlined how hedonistic the 90s were as well – something I didn’t really realise until I popped out the other end!
I think the two went hand in hand, a sort of council estate hedonism
Genuine optimism in the 90s? Presumably you missed the ERM debacle, the house repo’s, the long long Major years of things just not getting better or going anywhere positive at all, Tory sleaze…
So yes, Blair got a landslide…and was almost worse…catastrophic war, pensions wrecked by Brown, extension of the Tory public/private partnership…
Yes it all went swimmingly…but even worse was to come…Cameron and his successors…
She made some things better, the economy was a complete mess and needed reform.
However, there is no doubt that some areas of ‘traditional’ Britain were devastated by rapid deindustrialisation. Also, small C conservative herself has a blind spot for what much less travelled economic liberalism would bring in its wake..
I’m a little puzzled by the slightly negative tone of the piece, which at the same time details the quite specific artistry of Damon Albarn. He *is* a very talented artist, and his music reflects that- as the author describes. (I think it’s wrong to lump Albarn, some Suede and some Pulp into the same bag as Oasis, who were/are simply dreadful; unmusical; not-art.) I have zero memory of Albarn hiding the fact that he was “lower-middle bohemian” [many of us from the lower-middle class walked the same late 90s path; it was fun, so long as you stayed the right side of Jarvis Cocker’s famously common line, and oh heavens did Hackney heave with people who didn’t]; he often talked about it in interviews, so the charge cannot be hypocrisy (would we accuse Orwell of the same?). I really enjoyed the essay and the writer has a gift, but I’ll need to re-read I think, because I feel I’m slightly missing Nicholas’s point. If I had to summarise a single “point” about Blur, it would be that the majestic (cockney, and Albarn’s family are authentic Essex post-war overspill) knees-up can co-exist – must co-exist? – with a melancholic sense of loss (and, corollary, there’s always a morning-after price to pay for hedonism). Surely this is something that any Tory innately understands, at a near-genetic level? (Irony alert: the drummer is famously a committed Labour activist and candidate at the next election!) Thanks for this piece and the space to spill out reactions!
Actually I think Nicholas is saying that Blur were satirising the 90s’ culture. To an *extent* I agree, but they were also celebrating it. Isn’t that what an artist attempts? To look clearly and describe? (Walthamstow Dogs is – I was going to say “long gone”, but to those of us who were in our late 20s when Blur were peaking, it doesn’t feel like long ago at all, and the passing of that specific timebound culture – destroyed by Blair- is to be regretted.) The mid-80s to the late-90s were the best time to be alive in the 20th C, and nothing in the 21st has yet made me recalibrate.
Oasis: “dreadful, unmusical, not art” isn’t worth critiquing. Blur/Albarn (as the author notes) are more London-centric “music hall”, redolent of the typical post-yuppie complacency than anything else.
Quite simply, people will remember and still be playing Oasis when Blur are no longer even a blur.
I like both but I think you might be right there.
I agree, I think this depressing article and much of the comments might be over analysing with hindsight the fact that some young musicians got together and made some great music whatever your (anybody’s) personal tastes are. Anyone that can write a song and play it live is good – give it a go! They just happened to be around at the time of new politics and new marketing and another, regular, cultural phase. Those are different topics to analyse if you wish but It’s not necessary to denigrate the artists as the article does.
Blur were more talented but you are much too harsh on Oasis imho. I think it’s true that many people preferred their anthemic music to the slightly pretentious art school Blur offering, even if the latter was more innovative at its best.
She studied sculpture at St Martin’s college …..
Whatever. I’ll enjoy my crush on Damon for the rest of my life. Whoo hoo!
To be able to write anything of experienced based value on Brit-pop or the early nineties you now need to be at least 45 or better 50 plus. I’m not sure what age the writer is but this piece reads like it was written by someone who has studied the period but wasn’t actually there. It is riddled with cliches that anyone who lived in Britain in that decade (myself Edinburgh and London) wouldn’t recognise. I was both a university student and city worker and married in to a blue collar working class family. So I saw a pretty broad spectrum of Britsh life, and I don’t recognise the picture painted here.
What I would say is:
– Brit-pop was a relatively small UK Flash in the pan musical movement that nobody I Iknow of my age celebrates
– Cool-Britannia was a puff illusion created by Master Charlatan the Blair Creature reflected at the 2012 London Olympics by the Heir to Blair.
– Thatchers’ Britain was for the vast majority a time of energy, possibilities, opportunity and hope. The 90s with Blair, Clinton and Social Media reversed all that and is the root cause of the complete mess the Western World is in today with Globalist Technocrats (I mean the Adults in the Room) at the helm.
Regards
NHP
All Blur and Oasis did was reproduce anti-aesthetic representations of the south and north of England for the benefits of marketeers, particularly to target the student market with its enormous growth in numbers.
But aesthetically, this was surprisingly easy to ignore as the 80s and 90s were a golden period for English independent pop music. New genres were invented that were embraced by the artistic world rather than the reheated 60s pop of Blur and the pub rock of the Gallagher brothers.
Blur had some good songs though, even Oasis did at the start (though Pulp were better than either IMO). Both were popular in the working class town I grew up in.
Pop music has never been ideologically pure! Motown, for example. Bands constantly wanting to “break America”. Etc.
I still can’t forgive Blur for shamelessly ripping off Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit in the supposedly ironic Song 2. Surely one of the the greatest crimes in pop history
A greater irony is that all the Britpoppers seem to be doing alright still whereas many of their grunge brethren died horrible heroin deaths despite making better music
Nirvana aside, grunge was awful.
Oh I don’t know – I like Dinosaur Jr, although bands like Alice in Chains and Soundgarden were really metal bands
Probably because Britpop had a more cheery outlook. Even the ones deriding the living conditions at the time had an element of hopefulness and escapism about it. Grunge was simply wallowing in self pity (although I did like Nirvana)