The Britpop movement was a period in the Nineties when things could only get better, and there was a wave of optimism and hope fuelled by the emergence of Tony Blair and his idealistic New Labour plans, a growing economy that was to be dubbed the great stability, a warm nostalgic reverence for the Swinging Sixties, and a marketing campaign to promote Cool Britannia. Britpop was the music outlet for this nostalgic/optimistic nationalism, but it was also present in fashion and in art, with Damien Hirst the leading young pop artist in Britart. The musical styles of those bands associated with Britpop are quite diverse, and few share the same influences or the same fans - Oasis were a working class laddish band delivering thumping, simplistic but anthemic Beatles derived pop-rock with aggressive attitude, Blur were a middle-class indie art-rock band presenting thoughtful and complex melodic pieces influenced by the songs of Ray Davies with cheeky and knowing irreverence, Suede were an androgynous Bowie and glam rock inspired band, Pulp were indie-pop, and so on. What united them was that they were British, they emerged during the Nineties, and they were guitar driven pop-rock with commercial appeal. Any young British pop-rock band that emerged during the mid-Nineties tended to get drawn into the Britpop brand, so it becomes the most diverse musical genre pinned down to the narrowest location and time period.
Wikipedia:
Britpop was a mid-1990s UK-based music and culture movement that emphasised Britishness. It produced brighter, catchier alternative rock, partly in reaction to the popularity of the darker lyrical themes of the US-led grunge music and to the UK's own shoegazing music scene. The movement brought British alternative rock into the mainstream and formed the backbone of a larger British popular cultural movement, Cool Britannia, which evoked the Swinging Sixties and the British guitar pop of that decade.
Britpop was a media-driven focus on bands which emerged from the independent music scene of the early 1990s. Although the term was viewed as a marketing tool, and more of a cultural moment than a musical style or genre, its associated bands typically drew from the British pop music of the 1960s, glam rock and punk rock of the 1970s and indie pop of the 1980s.
The most successful bands linked with Britpop were Blur, Oasis, Suede and Pulp, known as the movement's "big four", although Suede and Pulp distanced themselves from the term. The timespan of Britpop is generally considered to be 1993–1997, and its peak years to be 1994–1995. A chart battle between Blur and Oasis (dubbed "The Battle of Britpop") brought the movement to the forefront of the British press in 1995. While music was the main focus, fashion, art, and politics also got involved, with Tony Blair and New Labour aligning themselves with the movement.
During the final years of the 1990s, many Britpop acts began to falter commercially or break up, or otherwise moved towards new genres or styles. Commercially, Britpop lost out to teen pop, led by acts such as The Spice Girls, Westlife and Britney Spears, while artistically it segued into a post-Britpop indie movement characterized by bands such as Travis, Snow Patrol and Coldplay.
Britpop, movement of British rock bands in the 1990s that drew consciously on the tradition of melodic, guitar-based British pop music established by the Beatles. Like nearly all musical youth trends, Britpop was about songs, guitars, jackets, and attitudes—though not necessarily in that order. It was perhaps not so much a movement as a simultaneous emergence of fairly like minds, given shape and direction by the determined boosting of the English music weekly the New Musical Express (NME)—which referred to Paul Weller of the Jam as “the Modfather of Britpop.” Indeed, many of those most associated with the term resisted the pigeonhole it offered.
The Beatles established a long-running British tradition of tuneful, guitar-driven pop bands, a tradition that was refreshed and updated every so often by new musical movements. Britpop, however, refers to the legion of '90s bands who drew more consciously from that tradition than ever before. Although the movement originated in the U.K. indie scene, Britpop was unabashedly commercial - its bands prized big, shiny, catchy hooks, as well as the glamour of mainstream pop stardom and the sense that they were creating the soundtrack to the lives of a new generation of British youth. And it was very definitely British youth they were aiming at; Britpop celebrated and commented on their lives, their culture, and their musical heritage, with little regard for whether that specificity would make them less accessible to American audiences. Britpop's youthful exuberance and desire for recognition were reactions not only against the shy, anti-star personas of the early-'90s shoegazer bands, but also the dourness of American grunge and the faceless producers behind the growing electronic-dance underground. Musically, Britpop drew from the Beatles, of course, but also from the pastoral sound of late-'60s Kinks, the mod movement (the Who, the Small Faces), '70s glam (David Bowie, T. Rex, Roxy Music), punk and new wave (the Jam, the Buzzcocks, Wire, Madness, XTC, Squeeze, Elvis Costello), and the alternative guitar-pop of the Smiths. All those artists were quintessentially British -- they crafted their images, lyrics, and sounds from a distinctly British frame of reference, which was why few of them became anything more than cult artists in the U.S. (and why Britpop functioned much the same way). Apart from those influences, Britpop had its most immediate roots in the Madchester scene, whose emphasis on good times and catchy tunes pointed the way around the shoegazer aesthetic. The Stone Roses' effortless pop hooks and rock-star attitude were the most important part of the foundation, but the true founding fathers of Britpop were Suede. Released in 1993, their self-titled debut became an unexpected smash with its fusion of glam-rock majesty and Smiths introspection. Suede opened the doors for even bigger breakthroughs in 1994 by Blur (Parklife) and Oasis (Definitely Maybe), who quickly became Britpop's two most popular superstars. With their success came a giddy explosion of similarly inspired bands; Elastica, Pulp, Supergrass, and the Boo Radleys were among the biggest. In 1996, Oasis became the only Britpop band to become genuine mainstream stars in the U.S. 1997 brought the first signals that the Britpop boom was beginning to run out of steam, namely Oasis' poorly reviewed third album and Blur's move toward American indie rock, along with the rise of $Radiohead in the wake of their third album, OK Computer. Soon, newer bands merged the moodiness of Radiohead with the workingman stance of Oasis -- a combination heard in everything from Coldplay to Kasabian -- and that became the British Alternative sound of the new millennium."
Top Albums associated with Britpop
Pulp – Different Class (C4) (NME) (Q) The greatest "overnight success" in the history of pop was when the hard working Pulp who had been around since the early Eighties and released five albums, had a sudden unexpected huge success with "Common People", and were then used by Micheal Eavis as the headline act at Glastonbury when Stone Roses pulled out at the last minute. Jarvis Cocker's confident and sublime performance, making best use of the opportunity gifted him, was broadcast live into people's homes by Channel Four, and made him something of a super star. Pulp were an intelligent pop-rock/indie-pop band taking ideas and loose inspiration from glam rock, disco, and other sources to craft attractive non-heroic songs around everyday lives and everyday people. They became suddenly very popular during the height of the Britpop movement, and so are regarded as one of the top bands of that period. Exceptional album. Score: 10Babybird - Ugly Beautiful Quirky, individual, intelligent, and quite beautiful. Score: 7
Ash – 1977 (1996) A rock-pop band often classed as alternative rock. Because this was the Nineties, they are linked with Britpop, though stylistically there is little to connect them, and they arrived a little late. They throw in some energy here and there and a bit of grunge, but there's nothing essentially new about what they are doing, and they seem scattered and directionless, echoing bands like Teenage Fanclub who had done it all before, and better. The hit single "Girl From Mars", while a little bit out of time in 1996 (it feels more late Eighties), is quite beautiful. "Oh Yeah", "Gone The Dream" and "Angel Interceptor" are the closest to the poppy jump and commercial appeal of Britpop. With the exception of "Kung Fu", all the lyrics are dreamy memories of some girl. Score: 5
The Auteurs – New Wave (1993) Quiet Indie band wearing their Kinks and George Harrison influences on their sleeve. Pleasant and competent, but nothing really stands out. Score: 4
Stereophonics - Word Gets Around (1997) Solid pop-rock during the later part of the BritPop period. Well crafted, and delivered with energy, attitude and the cool voice of frontman Kelly Jones. Score: 5 1/2
Artists (?)
- 60 Ft. Dolls[1]
- Ash[1]
- The Auteurs[2]
- Babybird [3]
- Black Grape[4]
- The Bluetones[1]
- Blur[5]
- The Boo Radleys[5]
- Cast[6]
- Catatonia[7][8]
- The Charlatans[5]
- Cornershop[9]
- Delicatessen[10]
- The Divine Comedy[1]
- Dodgy[1]
- Echobelly[1]
- Elastica[5]
- Embrace[1]
- Gene[1]
- Geneva[11]
- Gorky's Zygotic Mynci[12]
- Heavy Stereo[13]
- Kenickie[14]
- Kinky Machine[15][16]
- Kula Shaker[5]
- The Lightning Seeds[17]
- Longpigs[18]
- Lush[6]
- Manic Street Preachers[19]
- Mansun[6]
- Marion[18]
- Me Me Me[20]
- Menswear[21]
- My Life Story[22]
- Northern Uproar[1]
- Oasis[5]
- Ocean Colour Scene[1]
- Powder[23]
- Pulp[5]
- Rialto[6]
- Ride[24]
- Saint Etienne[25]
- Salad[1]
- The Seahorses[17]
- Shed Seven[26]
- Silver Sun[27]
- Shampoo[28][29]
- Sleeper[1]
- Stereophonics[30]
- Strangelove[31]
- Suede[5]
- Super Furry Animals[32]
- Supergrass[5]
- The Supernaturals[33]
- These Animal Men[34]
- Travis[35]
- The Verve[18]
What defines and identifies a Britpop band?
1) The band had to be British? Seems an obvious one this, given that Britpop is short for British pop. But. no - apparently there are non-British Britpop bands as listed here.
The Dandy Warhols - ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down (1997) AllMusic says: "skewered hipster culture with a wit that suggested they were America's answer to Brit-pop". My comment on 1001 Albums: Major label debut of this American indie band. I'm unsure about them. They are a worthy indie band, typical of that genre, but I'm not seeing how they are doing anything distinctive, interesting, quirky, better than anyone else, or are even that representative of the genre. Their actual debut was Dandys Rule OK, a more spirited and interesting record which attracted mixed reviews (generally a useful indicator of an interesting album) and which contained the power pop blast "TV Theme Song" followed by a tribute/pastiche of Ride called, cough cough, "Ride", and later a (poor) VU pastiche "Lou Weed" with a nodding and amusing nod at David Bowie's "Andy Warhol" in the full title: "(Tony This Song Is Called) Lou Weed", and "Grunge Betty" a tongue in cheek blend of grunge and swamp/boogie rock using some of the swagger and rhythm of "Black Betty", while their next album, Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia, contains their hit "Bohemian Like You", a spirited piece more in line with Rules OK, which had been used in an advert, so this is the album that sold and got the attention, but the rest of the album is rather mediocre. However, the opening track, "Godless" starts with the sound of "My Sweet Lord", so they hadn't lost their playfulness, but the album, other than "Like You", does lack the spirit and energy of Rules OK. "Shakin'" is a piece of Britpop blending Elastica ("Connection") with other elements, but the pastiche joke has now worn thin. Essentially then, a bit of a throwaway joke band whose debut holds some charm in the sense of a new band being bold and cheeky, but were unable to develop on from that, and resorted back to pastiche which now sounds tired and strained. Score: 4 1/2
:My conclusion from this is that The Dandy Warhols were either a pastiche band, or a band that absorbed and displayed their influences quite readily and with some good humour. And that though there are inevitable cultural differences between indie bands in America and the UK, that essentially they had more in common than they had differences. Indie-pop was indie-pop in both countries, but in the UK in the Nineties indie-pop was called Britpop.
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