Britpop Blog for 16th Nov.

Britpop Blog.
Britpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that progressed in the 1990’s.

While Nirvana was ruling across the pond with their second album “Nevermind.” It didn’t take Britain long to catch on to the Seattle Grunge scene and mould it into their own version.
Bands like Slowdive, Chapterhouse and Ride were known as “Shoegazers” or unambitious, by playing the same old songs album after album. This saw Indie Rock at its lowest. Journalists claimed many bands had lost confidence or joked about them running out of ideas, and soon Grunge hung over everything.
However, a new generation of musicians were doing the opposite to the typical Grunge takeover in London that was happening at the time. Often university students drawn to the capital to study, many of them in Bands. They all looked the opposite to Grunge, they sang in there own accents and were very proud of there country and were often seen supporting a union jack. They took influences from 60’s and 70’s guitar music and still managed to keep it new, fresh and different.
These were bands from artists such as The Who, The Jam, The Beatles and The Kinks etc..
But The Smiths was a popular influence to many Britpop Artists. This is were bands Suede and Blur were born.
Soon Britain began to shake off many of the elements of Grunge and it was clear a new generation of musicians were arising.
Blurs “Modern Life is Rubbish” in 93 proved that it became cool, to talk and sing about English Life, amusing examples of Football and Sunday Dinner.
Soon Artists such as Pulp emerged singing about their own take on the world, but still making sure that Britpop sound was still there. Suede’s Brett Anderson wrote many lyrics with a particular “English Quality” about them. Britpop bands such as Blur and Pulp’s lyrics were often ironic or a contradiction of English failure.

A chart battle between Oasis and Blur called "The Battle of Britpop" brought Britpop to the front of the British press in 1995. In the past the bands had praised each other but over the course of the year fights between the two increased. Spurred on by the media, the groups became engaged in what the NME dubbed on the cover of its 12 August issue the "British Heavyweight Championship" (Image is above,) with the release of Oasis' single "Roll With It", and Blur's "Country House" on the same day. The battle turned the two bands against each other, with Oasis representing the North of England, while Blur represented the South.
The event caught the public eye and gained huge media attention in newspapers, even tabloids, and even the BBC News.

“Yes, in a week where news leaked that Saddam Hussein was preparing nuclear weapons, everyday folks were still getting slaughtered in Bosnia and Mike Tyson was making his comeback, however the battle between Oasis and Blur was massive and the whole nation was Britpop crazy!”
- taken from NME 93.

Eventually Blur won the battle of the bands, selling 274,000 copies to Oasis' 216,000 - the songs charting at number one and number two. However, in the years to come Oasis became more successful than Blur. Unlike Blur, Oasis was able to achieve commercial success in the United States with single "Wonderwall".
Oasis's second album What's the Story Morning Glory? eventually sold over four million copies in the UK, becoming the third best-selling album in British history.

In my opinion Britpop was a great genre, even in bands today you can hear influences from Blur, Suede and Oasis. But it will never be as crazy as it was back then, especially not with all the modern pop music and rnb computer programmednoise the whole country is going crazy for.

k.