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The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock
Beginning in 1994 and closing in the first months of 1998, the UK passed through a cultural moment as distinct and as celebrated as any since the war. Founded on rock music, celebrity, boom-time economics and fleeting political optimism - this was "Cool Britannia". Records sold in their millions, a new celebrity elite emerged and Tony Blair's Labour Party found itself, at long last, returned to government. Drawing on interviews from all the major bands - including Oasis, Blur, Elastica and Suede - from music journalists, record executives and those close to government, this title charts the rise and fall of the Britpop movement. John Harris was there; and in his book he argues that the high point of British music's cultural impact also signalled its effective demise - if rock stars were now friends of the government, then how could they continue to matter?
426 pages, Paperback
First published May 5, 2003
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John Harris
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
January 18, 2018
I've had to restart this review several times, because it keeps turning into a sort of personal playlist of my favourite tracks of the 90s. I'm going to try and keep the impulse in check, but it's hard, because Britpop came along at the perfect time for me. I had hardly been interested in current music, growing up – by my early teens, when everyone was music-mad, the prevailing genre was grunge and the prevailing mood was a concomitant affectation of moody self-loathing and unwashed fringes. It just didn't speak to me at all. Then, suddenly, everything changed.
I can't remember who induced me to get a copy of Modern Life is Rubbish but I do distinctly remember listening to it for the first time in 1993. I was so unused to hearing people sing in English accents that I actually burst out laughing during ‘For Tomorrow’ – it almost felt like a comedy album to me, which is amazing to think now. And not just the accents – the words, too, were about the experience of London and suburban Britain that I recognised. The opening bars of ‘Colin Zeal’ still give me a vision of my bedroom that afternoon.
I never quite appreciated how deliberate this enhanced Englishness was to the inception of (what would be labelled as) Britpop – Blur wrote the album after a disastrous American tour and all of the major players were animated by a desire to oppose American grunge with something home-grown. At the time, to be honest it felt more like a happy coincidence than anything strategic. Harris sets out the chronology really well – from the first flutterings of the Manchester scene with The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, through the transitional early work of Suede, and into the full Britpop explosion with Blur's second album and Oasis's first.
But, as Damon Albarn reflects later, far from being Britpop against the world, it was every band for themselves. It's astonishingly acrimonious from the inside – they all seem to have loathed each other with a fiery hatred.
It was a bit disconcerting finding out quite how obnoxious some of my teenage heroes really were. On the evidence of this book, they were all unremittingly awful to each other, and the bitchiness is exacerbated by an incestuous fluidity between band-members. Justine Frischmann, of course, originally part of Suede and dating Brett Anderson, left him for Damon Albarn, thereby prompting Albarn's gargantuan competitive streak; her guitarist Donna Matthews started off dating Elastica's drummer but dropped him for the guy from Menswear. Albarn himself was so extravagantly and consistently unfaithful to Justine that, when she went to visit him in Reykjavik, she stopped into a local comedy club and found someone performing a sketch about how all the new babies born that year were called Damon.
Her own band was one of the wittiest, most joyful pop-punk groups around in the early-mid nineties; the fact that they only managed one decent album before falling apart is as good an illustration as any of the deleterious effects of drugs on the 90s music scene. Unlike the mind-expanding 1960s, the 90s was all about cocaine, originally – which at least kept people fairly productive – and later, heroin, which just kept them sitting in the corner of a bedsit staring at the insides of their eyelids. Donna spent nights on tour getting beaten up or worse in crack dens; she tried Naltrexone implants to curb the cravings, but her addiction got so bad that she would just yank the stitches out, jam her fingers in her abdomen, and gouge the implants out so she could shoot up again.
As Harris says, ‘only the most talented minds could successfully navigate all this: in many cases, the basic chapters of most careers – aspiration, achievement and rapid decline – were enacted over little more than three years’. Damon Albarn is still around and still making interesting music, but it's hard to think of anyone else who's survived into the 2010s. OK, Noel Gallagher is still recording, but…meh. Oasis were the soundtrack to my last years of school, but I could never get over how feeble the lyrics were and they kept writing the same (pretty fun) song over and over again. (‘It was difficult to think of any group whose career had combined stratospheric success with such stubbornly limited horizons.’) Noel was always a talented songwriter but you kind of felt sorry for him; watching him drag his brother around always put me in mind of Clint Eastwood with that orangutan.
When it comes to assessing the music itself, though, Harris is as hit-and-miss as any other music critic; you either share his taste or you don't. He can be quite dismissive of bands that weren't in the top tier of Britpop; I loved Sleeper and Echobelly and Gene and several other groups that get pretty short shrift here, and other bands are excluded on the grounds that he does not consider them Britpop. So there is barely any mention of Radiohead (who did not have the kind of decline and fall that Harris considers emblematic), and no reference to my own favourite music of the time, namely triphop and the Bristol sound. I suppose he's right that they're all different genres, but at the time it felt like part of one big renaissance to me.
At any rate, by the time it was big news, it was already all over: the fuck-you female leads like Frischmann and Louise Wener were diluted into the ‘girl power’ of the Spice Girls, Alan McGee went cold turkey, and Blur wrote their best work (the self-titled Blur (1997) and the brilliantly miserable 13 (1999)) when they ditched the music-hall vaudeville and finally opened themselves up to American influences. But while it lasted, the whole thing was glorious, and reliving it through this book will have you flicking through your old CDs with melancholy, nostalgic glee.
I can't remember who induced me to get a copy of Modern Life is Rubbish but I do distinctly remember listening to it for the first time in 1993. I was so unused to hearing people sing in English accents that I actually burst out laughing during ‘For Tomorrow’ – it almost felt like a comedy album to me, which is amazing to think now. And not just the accents – the words, too, were about the experience of London and suburban Britain that I recognised. The opening bars of ‘Colin Zeal’ still give me a vision of my bedroom that afternoon.
I never quite appreciated how deliberate this enhanced Englishness was to the inception of (what would be labelled as) Britpop – Blur wrote the album after a disastrous American tour and all of the major players were animated by a desire to oppose American grunge with something home-grown. At the time, to be honest it felt more like a happy coincidence than anything strategic. Harris sets out the chronology really well – from the first flutterings of the Manchester scene with The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, through the transitional early work of Suede, and into the full Britpop explosion with Blur's second album and Oasis's first.
But, as Damon Albarn reflects later, far from being Britpop against the world, it was every band for themselves. It's astonishingly acrimonious from the inside – they all seem to have loathed each other with a fiery hatred.
‘[Blur's] guitarist I've got a lot of time for. The drummer I've never met – I hear he's a nice guy. The bass player and singer – I hope the pair of them catch AIDS and die because I fucking hate them two.’
—Noel Gallagher
‘We felt a common cause with Pulp at first. We really supported them. But in a lot of ways, they were even bigger cunts than Oasis. They were in our birds' knickers: devious little fuckers.’
—Alex James
It was a bit disconcerting finding out quite how obnoxious some of my teenage heroes really were. On the evidence of this book, they were all unremittingly awful to each other, and the bitchiness is exacerbated by an incestuous fluidity between band-members. Justine Frischmann, of course, originally part of Suede and dating Brett Anderson, left him for Damon Albarn, thereby prompting Albarn's gargantuan competitive streak; her guitarist Donna Matthews started off dating Elastica's drummer but dropped him for the guy from Menswear. Albarn himself was so extravagantly and consistently unfaithful to Justine that, when she went to visit him in Reykjavik, she stopped into a local comedy club and found someone performing a sketch about how all the new babies born that year were called Damon.
Her own band was one of the wittiest, most joyful pop-punk groups around in the early-mid nineties; the fact that they only managed one decent album before falling apart is as good an illustration as any of the deleterious effects of drugs on the 90s music scene. Unlike the mind-expanding 1960s, the 90s was all about cocaine, originally – which at least kept people fairly productive – and later, heroin, which just kept them sitting in the corner of a bedsit staring at the insides of their eyelids. Donna spent nights on tour getting beaten up or worse in crack dens; she tried Naltrexone implants to curb the cravings, but her addiction got so bad that she would just yank the stitches out, jam her fingers in her abdomen, and gouge the implants out so she could shoot up again.
As Harris says, ‘only the most talented minds could successfully navigate all this: in many cases, the basic chapters of most careers – aspiration, achievement and rapid decline – were enacted over little more than three years’. Damon Albarn is still around and still making interesting music, but it's hard to think of anyone else who's survived into the 2010s. OK, Noel Gallagher is still recording, but…meh. Oasis were the soundtrack to my last years of school, but I could never get over how feeble the lyrics were and they kept writing the same (pretty fun) song over and over again. (‘It was difficult to think of any group whose career had combined stratospheric success with such stubbornly limited horizons.’) Noel was always a talented songwriter but you kind of felt sorry for him; watching him drag his brother around always put me in mind of Clint Eastwood with that orangutan.
When it comes to assessing the music itself, though, Harris is as hit-and-miss as any other music critic; you either share his taste or you don't. He can be quite dismissive of bands that weren't in the top tier of Britpop; I loved Sleeper and Echobelly and Gene and several other groups that get pretty short shrift here, and other bands are excluded on the grounds that he does not consider them Britpop. So there is barely any mention of Radiohead (who did not have the kind of decline and fall that Harris considers emblematic), and no reference to my own favourite music of the time, namely triphop and the Bristol sound. I suppose he's right that they're all different genres, but at the time it felt like part of one big renaissance to me.
At any rate, by the time it was big news, it was already all over: the fuck-you female leads like Frischmann and Louise Wener were diluted into the ‘girl power’ of the Spice Girls, Alan McGee went cold turkey, and Blur wrote their best work (the self-titled Blur (1997) and the brilliantly miserable 13 (1999)) when they ditched the music-hall vaudeville and finally opened themselves up to American influences. But while it lasted, the whole thing was glorious, and reliving it through this book will have you flicking through your old CDs with melancholy, nostalgic glee.
May 1, 2015
I recently read the book "Everyone Loves Our Town", an oral history of Grunge music. I was never a huge fan, but it sounded interesting. While I read it, I thought to myself, "I wish there was a book like this about Britpop." Well...duh. But I'm American, so you need to cut me some slack.
I was studying abroad in Scotland in the spring of 1990, so I feel like I was present for a tiny bit of the movement. You could tell something was brewing. When I walked down the streets of Edinburgh, every song that spilled out of the shops seemed to be The Happy Mondays' Step On, or sounded just like it. The lads walking down the street all wore a uniform of psychedelic paisley shirts, baggy jeans and big suede shoes in jewel colors. Their hair was intricate mops of curls. They all looked like they should be in bands and walked with a strut like the music was playing just for them. There was excitement in the air.
This book confirmed several things for me:
I've pulled out my old cassettes, and most of the music still sounds amazing. The Stone Roses still makes me want to dance wildly, Ned's Atomic Dustbin still sound like they have something extremely important and urgent to say in every song, Inspiral Carpets is still wistfully gorgeous, and the Happy Mondays, well, still good for a laugh.
I heart Blur forever n' ever. (insert fangirl squeal here)
I've always liked Oasis' music, but didn't really warm to the band's members. Too scowly and mean looking. All eyebrows and parkas. They didn't seem like nice people, and this book really confirms it.
Heroin sucks. That's stating the obvious, but the Grunge book and this one really show how damaging it was to so many careers and lives at the time. Imagine what some of these bands could have accomplished had they not been so drug addled.
What I learned:
I liked reading about bands that got little or no attention in the US, like Menswear and Suede. I've gone on Youtube to watch some Suede videos, and they are...wow....something else.
Justine Frischmann has an oversharing problem.
British politics can be sort of dull. Again, excuse the American, but if you are not that familiar with the people and situations, those sections sort of drag. My only complaint with the book, but really, it's just cultural.
I've found a new appreciation for Blur's This is a Low. I'd never paid it much attention, but finding out about the inspiration for the song was really interesting.
Altogether a great read. Still my all time favorite era of music.
I was studying abroad in Scotland in the spring of 1990, so I feel like I was present for a tiny bit of the movement. You could tell something was brewing. When I walked down the streets of Edinburgh, every song that spilled out of the shops seemed to be The Happy Mondays' Step On, or sounded just like it. The lads walking down the street all wore a uniform of psychedelic paisley shirts, baggy jeans and big suede shoes in jewel colors. Their hair was intricate mops of curls. They all looked like they should be in bands and walked with a strut like the music was playing just for them. There was excitement in the air.
This book confirmed several things for me:
I've pulled out my old cassettes, and most of the music still sounds amazing. The Stone Roses still makes me want to dance wildly, Ned's Atomic Dustbin still sound like they have something extremely important and urgent to say in every song, Inspiral Carpets is still wistfully gorgeous, and the Happy Mondays, well, still good for a laugh.
I heart Blur forever n' ever. (insert fangirl squeal here)
I've always liked Oasis' music, but didn't really warm to the band's members. Too scowly and mean looking. All eyebrows and parkas. They didn't seem like nice people, and this book really confirms it.
Heroin sucks. That's stating the obvious, but the Grunge book and this one really show how damaging it was to so many careers and lives at the time. Imagine what some of these bands could have accomplished had they not been so drug addled.
What I learned:
I liked reading about bands that got little or no attention in the US, like Menswear and Suede. I've gone on Youtube to watch some Suede videos, and they are...wow....something else.
Justine Frischmann has an oversharing problem.
British politics can be sort of dull. Again, excuse the American, but if you are not that familiar with the people and situations, those sections sort of drag. My only complaint with the book, but really, it's just cultural.
I've found a new appreciation for Blur's This is a Low. I'd never paid it much attention, but finding out about the inspiration for the song was really interesting.
Altogether a great read. Still my all time favorite era of music.
October 15, 2019
This is the definitive book about the Britpop years. And that’s coming from one who has written a book about Britpop... Very different book to ‘I was Britpopped...’ though, written like a true biographer rather than a fan, and with some great first person interviews.
The retrospect hasn’t even been dampened by the 16 years it’s been since he wrote this book.
I purposefully left it to read until now and am glad that I did. Great story, hats off to you John Harris!
The retrospect hasn’t even been dampened by the 16 years it’s been since he wrote this book.
I purposefully left it to read until now and am glad that I did. Great story, hats off to you John Harris!
September 1, 2016
Unlike most people of my generation (late 30's) I did not get into alternative rock via grunge. One day in March 1994, I saw Blur's Girls and Boys on television. It was a revelation and weirdly I started to notice a ton of British bands started to creep into my life: Pulp, Oasis, Supergrass, Radiohead, Sleeper, Terrorvision, Reef, Echobelly, Suede, Cast, Shed 7 (yeah I now they are joke but they did have a couple of great tunes) and so many more. These songs were played on national radio (for Malta that means a lot) and also, for the first time, loads of compilations had these songs so if you were willing to spend 11.00 LM they were yours. Personally the last half of 1994, the whole of 1995 and the first half of 1996 were great times to be a teenager and getting into alt music. Then The Spice Girls came along and ruined everything until 2001 when The Strokes gave music balls again but that's another story.
Now looking back and re-listening to britpop hits, I am noticing that they don't hold up very well. The exceptions being Suede, Pulp, Blur and the first two Oasis albums.
Anyway John Harris documents the Britpop phenomena in The Last party and it is fantastic. From the humble beginnings with Suede and Blur then the high points, drugs and record label excess. All culminating with Blair's election and the aftermath. If anyone wants some insight to this musical phase then this is the book to read.
Now looking back and re-listening to britpop hits, I am noticing that they don't hold up very well. The exceptions being Suede, Pulp, Blur and the first two Oasis albums.
Anyway John Harris documents the Britpop phenomena in The Last party and it is fantastic. From the humble beginnings with Suede and Blur then the high points, drugs and record label excess. All culminating with Blair's election and the aftermath. If anyone wants some insight to this musical phase then this is the book to read.
April 14, 2023
What this book is not:
1) about music
2) short
3) coherent
4) about the topic of its title
What this book is:
1) Primarily about the lifestyles of some well-known musicians, some you haven't heard of, some producers, and various other people. Almost everyone receives a tiresomely complete biography.
Did you want to know which musician you don't remember slept with which roadie from somewhere you've never heard of? (Also which celebrity musician slept with which other celebrity musician, and about how certain other celebrity musicians were annoyed by this.)
2) A Tony Blair love fest. His biography is the longest and he recurs throughout the book, never depicted in anything but a positive light.
The Red Wave politics stuff was musicians interacting with politics, the rest (ie. most) barely relates to the topic.
3) A complete mess of detail. The narrative is not linear. Okay, so the chapters are thematic. No. So we have an exhaustive list of precisely what concoction of drugs and or alcohol was being consumed and precisely which bar they were in, but since it could have been any time between 1992 and 1996, it matters even less. Throw in Tony Blair and the Labour party into this mix. Plus randomly timed biographies of a seemingly random list of people.
4) Definitely not a cultural history. Somewhere in this mud pie, there is comment on cultural trends, such as the rise of nationalism in pop music (eg. Union Jacks become prominent, lyrics become made to be as working class as they can be.
One story I liked was about a very short-lived band who went on tour (rinse-repeat: drugs, alcohol, hi jinks) with only four songs and the label kept throwing money at them, despite them having nothing to show for it. There should have been some comment about the pop music industry there. But we're soon back to exactly which clothes one or other of the Gallagher brothers (keep up-they're the ones from Oasis, so I remember their names) is wearing and which store they bought them from.
5) Not about 'The Spectacular Demise of English Rock'-the 'spectacular' overuse of adjective and exaggeration in the prose is another thing you have to wade through. In order for their to be a 'demise', it would have to have been strong in the first place. In fact, the book describes (I mean announces) many different 'great' bands from The Beatles, through the 70s, and the 80s, and the early 90s. So what is...demising? A demise FROM WHAT? Whilst its true that for a time, a couple of so-called rock bands became pop stars were quite famous, and that, like all pop music, quickly faded into nothing, the very title of the book betrays the fact that this is not really about rock music. The title is a contradiction in terms. British rock kept going and it's still going now. What are you talking about?
Art from artlessness or a lack of technique is important in understanding punk in rock, but instead of this we are given a vague impression that Oasis just weren't very good at playing their instruments.
Almost none of this book is about music. Here's a classic and indicative moment allegedly about the music:
[Of Oasis' 'Some Might Say'] ...a musical power that offered the listener little opportunity but to surrender (that's impossible and meaningless-pointless opinion).
It's brutally constructed verses (okay, potential, what does that mean?)
thought they soon tumbled into doggerel (oh, he's off again, I guess we don't get to know what 'brutally constructed' means)
initially gave Liam lines that not only nailed what made him such a compelling presence (more celebrity worship-also meaningless: it requires that everyone find him compelling to make sense. Some might. I don't, so it doesn't)
but identified him with an unspeakably potent archetype: the same Dionysian menace that... (Eurgh, what? Tall about exaggeration. 'Unspeakably potent'. What?! Like something kind of satanic Dionysus? My socks at the end of the day? That doesn't even begin to make sense. Take a thesaurus, hit a random adjective, talk about Liam freaking Gallagher as some kind of evil god genius. What?!)
'a chorus that...sounded like a heartfelt acknowledgment of the Gallagher's mutual dependence' (Okay, musical comparison with The Beatles. Probably valid. In what way? That's right. We're not told. We just have to assume he's right. (It is a valid comparison, but the point is that Harris doesn't really describe the music at all, so it may or may not be true.)
but the Gallagher's sheer conviction meant that they managed to avoid sounding cheap.
That last statement is typical. Almost everything said about the music throughout the book is ENTIRELY dependent on opinion ('perhaps the greatest song ever/worst song ever' et. al.). He almost gets there by describing the shortness of early Elastica songs as 'cut up', but it's so bogged down in how angry somebody is about shagging or what drugs they're on, that you have to dig deep for the almost non-existent gold nuggets.
If you want a celebrity love/shag fest, like I said, because there is so much other crap, you have to get through that and a 'narrative of high jinks' doesn't work because the story is not linear, so it's just 'some high jinks', you have to have patience.
I think the word is 'indulgent', but this is a typical value judgement is precisely what this book feeds on.
'Bullsh*t' is much more accurate. Or 'hot air'. Lots and lots and lots of words that say just about nothing.
1) about music
2) short
3) coherent
4) about the topic of its title
What this book is:
1) Primarily about the lifestyles of some well-known musicians, some you haven't heard of, some producers, and various other people. Almost everyone receives a tiresomely complete biography.
Did you want to know which musician you don't remember slept with which roadie from somewhere you've never heard of? (Also which celebrity musician slept with which other celebrity musician, and about how certain other celebrity musicians were annoyed by this.)
2) A Tony Blair love fest. His biography is the longest and he recurs throughout the book, never depicted in anything but a positive light.
The Red Wave politics stuff was musicians interacting with politics, the rest (ie. most) barely relates to the topic.
3) A complete mess of detail. The narrative is not linear. Okay, so the chapters are thematic. No. So we have an exhaustive list of precisely what concoction of drugs and or alcohol was being consumed and precisely which bar they were in, but since it could have been any time between 1992 and 1996, it matters even less. Throw in Tony Blair and the Labour party into this mix. Plus randomly timed biographies of a seemingly random list of people.
4) Definitely not a cultural history. Somewhere in this mud pie, there is comment on cultural trends, such as the rise of nationalism in pop music (eg. Union Jacks become prominent, lyrics become made to be as working class as they can be.
One story I liked was about a very short-lived band who went on tour (rinse-repeat: drugs, alcohol, hi jinks) with only four songs and the label kept throwing money at them, despite them having nothing to show for it. There should have been some comment about the pop music industry there. But we're soon back to exactly which clothes one or other of the Gallagher brothers (keep up-they're the ones from Oasis, so I remember their names) is wearing and which store they bought them from.
5) Not about 'The Spectacular Demise of English Rock'-the 'spectacular' overuse of adjective and exaggeration in the prose is another thing you have to wade through. In order for their to be a 'demise', it would have to have been strong in the first place. In fact, the book describes (I mean announces) many different 'great' bands from The Beatles, through the 70s, and the 80s, and the early 90s. So what is...demising? A demise FROM WHAT? Whilst its true that for a time, a couple of so-called rock bands became pop stars were quite famous, and that, like all pop music, quickly faded into nothing, the very title of the book betrays the fact that this is not really about rock music. The title is a contradiction in terms. British rock kept going and it's still going now. What are you talking about?
Art from artlessness or a lack of technique is important in understanding punk in rock, but instead of this we are given a vague impression that Oasis just weren't very good at playing their instruments.
Almost none of this book is about music. Here's a classic and indicative moment allegedly about the music:
[Of Oasis' 'Some Might Say'] ...a musical power that offered the listener little opportunity but to surrender (that's impossible and meaningless-pointless opinion).
It's brutally constructed verses (okay, potential, what does that mean?)
thought they soon tumbled into doggerel (oh, he's off again, I guess we don't get to know what 'brutally constructed' means)
initially gave Liam lines that not only nailed what made him such a compelling presence (more celebrity worship-also meaningless: it requires that everyone find him compelling to make sense. Some might. I don't, so it doesn't)
but identified him with an unspeakably potent archetype: the same Dionysian menace that... (Eurgh, what? Tall about exaggeration. 'Unspeakably potent'. What?! Like something kind of satanic Dionysus? My socks at the end of the day? That doesn't even begin to make sense. Take a thesaurus, hit a random adjective, talk about Liam freaking Gallagher as some kind of evil god genius. What?!)
'a chorus that...sounded like a heartfelt acknowledgment of the Gallagher's mutual dependence' (Okay, musical comparison with The Beatles. Probably valid. In what way? That's right. We're not told. We just have to assume he's right. (It is a valid comparison, but the point is that Harris doesn't really describe the music at all, so it may or may not be true.)
but the Gallagher's sheer conviction meant that they managed to avoid sounding cheap.
That last statement is typical. Almost everything said about the music throughout the book is ENTIRELY dependent on opinion ('perhaps the greatest song ever/worst song ever' et. al.). He almost gets there by describing the shortness of early Elastica songs as 'cut up', but it's so bogged down in how angry somebody is about shagging or what drugs they're on, that you have to dig deep for the almost non-existent gold nuggets.
If you want a celebrity love/shag fest, like I said, because there is so much other crap, you have to get through that and a 'narrative of high jinks' doesn't work because the story is not linear, so it's just 'some high jinks', you have to have patience.
I think the word is 'indulgent', but this is a typical value judgement is precisely what this book feeds on.
'Bullsh*t' is much more accurate. Or 'hot air'. Lots and lots and lots of words that say just about nothing.
July 2, 2012
From the outside, Britpop must have appeared to be a strnge thing. For one of the only times since the 1950's the UK had a musical culture all its own - different from that in the USA (which was at the time, as I understood, dominated by college rock - or else rudderless). To see it this way though is to rather miss the point: Britpop was never a music genre, it was a zeitgeist. In the mid-nineties the banner covered bands and artists as disparate as Radiohead, Black Grape and PJ Harvey. That is it included rock and dance as well as pop; Britpop, really, was about British youth embracing a peculiarly British culture - one which assumed that British bands, Britsh fashion designers and British everything was simply (contrary to everything we'd seen since the 1970's) better. Eventually, this resulted in the bizarre culmination of its stars being invited to 10 Downing Street.
This book does a good job of charting, conveying and explaining the rise and fall of Britpop and I found it entertaining (though perhaps this was partly through nostalgia). What I think it suffered from though was an isolationist perpective: Britpop may have appeared strange but actually (as with the college rock noted above) it was not unique. There were profound political changes in the 1990's in all of Europe, not just in the UK, and these were often related and had similar cultural outcomes in the Western World. In that light, this book seeks to answer the question of whatever happened to counter culture.
This book does a good job of charting, conveying and explaining the rise and fall of Britpop and I found it entertaining (though perhaps this was partly through nostalgia). What I think it suffered from though was an isolationist perpective: Britpop may have appeared strange but actually (as with the college rock noted above) it was not unique. There were profound political changes in the 1990's in all of Europe, not just in the UK, and these were often related and had similar cultural outcomes in the Western World. In that light, this book seeks to answer the question of whatever happened to counter culture.
June 15, 2022
lol they called the album think tank ‘think thank’ and now i cant stop laughing
December 7, 2021
The "Can't Stop Won't Stop" of 90's British rock. It has a firm grasp on the macro and micro of a movement while being utterly compelling. It does not have rose tinted glasses on either. No punch is pulled even for critical darlings from possibly the last time the "behaving like assholes" to "interesting to watch" ingredients were just right in rock music.
September 3, 2025
I liked this as it was a good chronological story of a brilliant time to be alive, and was worth reading to remind me of one of my favourite 90s quotes ever when Noel wished Daman Albarn died of Aids! A comment that wouldnt be allowed anywhere near the media these days in the context it was said, throw in Gazza telling Norway to fuckoff live on TV and you get the picture of the "lads" culture that existed then BUT this book heavily focuses on 4 bands and there was also much more to that era than is discussed here and war criminal Blair gets a far to soft ride from where he was to where we ended and they give Oasis 3rd album, predictable shit, I think Be Here Now is a brilliant album, yes they were clearly coked up to eyeballs but I don't get the hate for it? anyway it's well worth a read if you were there and if you weren't a look back on better, simpler times.
*for completeness I don't condone people wishing people dead, nor do I condone people telling countries to f*** off*
*for completeness I don't condone people wishing people dead, nor do I condone people telling countries to f*** off*
May 21, 2019
Great book. Made me miss the heady days of Britpop with its barely repressed sexuality and free thoughts. Really, honestly, could care less about British politics.
August 11, 2015
Real stellar read. Excellently well researched and equally well written. Although brimming with loads of interviews from the stars themselves and well as plenty of additional (to some supplemental) historical (essential contextual considerations) information to flesh out and make sense of not only the very world Britpop was born into and briefly inhabited before its untimely, yet ultimately predicable, abrupt implosion in 1997- and the music scene (as well as the contemporaneity aesthetic asipirations) that preceded it, on both sides of the pond; we never get lost in the details or lose sight of the narrative itself. John Harris has a rare gift to keep us completely engaged with excellent pacing and pleasantly smooth writing while never getting us lost in immense details of the episodic and highly mercurial inner-band conflicts, excessive drug use, constant espionage of the paparazzi, compounded by the the complete and utter insanity that is the music industry; that the author captured in their full intensity and detail.
While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, my only real gripe is that the vast majority of his focus is on Damon Albarn, Justine Frischman, Noel Gallagher and their respective bands. While this makes sense, because Blur and Oasis are THE Britpop bands (well the only two that will matter to the global audience as a whole), way too much focus is given to Frischman's Elastica- which only released one album in the era and is largely inconsequential now (2015 addendum - they still don't matter)- unlike the previously aforementioned giants of Britpop.
Moreover, by focusing too much on these three bands, Harris loses sight, and almost seems to brush off the vast swathe of equally- and in my opinion, in some cases more so - talented bands of the era with just a casual mention of their names like the Boo-Radleys, etc... Really fantastic bands that not only were important to the Britpop movement historically but, have still continued to make fantastic music- such as Supergrass and The Charlatans (Hell, they've had 3 number one hits- I think that deserves much more than a simple casual name dropping of their front-man Tim Burgess. Mr. Harris could have gained a lot of vision if he had zoomed out a bit in his study of the era ).
I'll admit, I'm miffed that one of my favourite British bands of the Bripop Era, The Charlatans, doesn't get their due in this book. (Which honestly makes this criticism more of a personal vendetta than I'd like because The Charlatans will always have a special place in my heart.) But the book as a whole is a really fantastic account of an era that constantly reminds us of plenty universal constants in human nature that factor into the music industry just as anywhere else. (Also, that all movements are transient and Britop is just one of the more fleeting ones) and its a good thing we have excellent writers like John Harris bring us a story of this movement, from its ups and its down- until the eventual and highly inevitable movement toward entropy that all human endeavors must face.
While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, my only real gripe is that the vast majority of his focus is on Damon Albarn, Justine Frischman, Noel Gallagher and their respective bands. While this makes sense, because Blur and Oasis are THE Britpop bands (well the only two that will matter to the global audience as a whole), way too much focus is given to Frischman's Elastica- which only released one album in the era and is largely inconsequential now (2015 addendum - they still don't matter)- unlike the previously aforementioned giants of Britpop.
Moreover, by focusing too much on these three bands, Harris loses sight, and almost seems to brush off the vast swathe of equally- and in my opinion, in some cases more so - talented bands of the era with just a casual mention of their names like the Boo-Radleys, etc... Really fantastic bands that not only were important to the Britpop movement historically but, have still continued to make fantastic music- such as Supergrass and The Charlatans (Hell, they've had 3 number one hits- I think that deserves much more than a simple casual name dropping of their front-man Tim Burgess. Mr. Harris could have gained a lot of vision if he had zoomed out a bit in his study of the era ).
I'll admit, I'm miffed that one of my favourite British bands of the Bripop Era, The Charlatans, doesn't get their due in this book. (Which honestly makes this criticism more of a personal vendetta than I'd like because The Charlatans will always have a special place in my heart.) But the book as a whole is a really fantastic account of an era that constantly reminds us of plenty universal constants in human nature that factor into the music industry just as anywhere else. (Also, that all movements are transient and Britop is just one of the more fleeting ones) and its a good thing we have excellent writers like John Harris bring us a story of this movement, from its ups and its down- until the eventual and highly inevitable movement toward entropy that all human endeavors must face.
September 17, 2007
George W. Bush's friend Tony Blair spent a lot of time catering to rock stars. This book covers Tony Blair's courtship of UK youth via the stars of Britpop. Though the stories mainly center around Blur and Oasis and their political activities, it covers an extended and arguably creatively vibrant period of British pop music, and any Anglophile over 25 would probably enjoy reading this. It's like a great article in the NME, before the NME went utterly crap.
NC
NC
December 29, 2018
It could've used more Oasis though.
January 22, 2020
A nice trip down memory lane - how I miss the mid to late 90s.
September 30, 2025
Having only just started my Britpop novitiate, my grasp on the greater cultural zeitgeist of the time is limited, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. With that in mind, if you're a newbie to the genre like me, I highly recommend giving this a read!
It won't be for everyone. Other readers have pointed out Harris's clear bias towards the musical stylings of certain groups, but he still does a rather thorough review of some of the most notable records of the time, regardless of his personal investment, so this habit didn't personally deter me. Others have also pointed out how his bias extends past his color commentary on the music and into the actual documentation of the scene, which focuses on a few core groups (Oasis, Blur, Suede, Elastica, and to a lesser extent, Pulp, Menswear, Radiohead, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Sleeper, et cetera). To be honest, this just feels like a matter of logistics rather than prejudice, as the book is already lengthy covering the exploits of its main characters, who are all decently intertwined both personally and professionally. While it could be argued other groups were unfairly pushed to the side in the interest of harping on the mythos of the genre's most popular acts, I'd argue that is in fact the point, as Harris seeks to dismantle the populism he ultimately concludes was the Achilles' heel of the movement.
Another common criticism is the portrayal of certain figures, which I felt was a decent shake all-around. Perhaps if you're coming to this from the perspective of a fan rather than a music historian, it could feel like some characters get off better than others (Tony Blair in particular comes across a little too ambiguously for my liking, though I am reading this twenty two years after the initial publishing, so I digress). Everyone comes across as at least a little bit of a caustic asshole because that was just who they were when they were. More a sign of the times than a personal indictment.
When it comes to Harris's style, that'll really be up to personal discretion. I enjoyed his very opinionated and empirical point of view, which reflects his music journalism background. However, there are times where he can come across as a bit overly prosaic and tart. Overall, his observations about the greater scene and his insight into the cultural contexts surrounding the Britpop craze were very enjoyable.
I got a kick out of reading this and a pretty sweet playlist as well. Definitely a great jumping off point for newcomers!
September 3, 2021
Reading this was a bit like living through Britpop itself. At first rather joyful as the car radio sparked out tunes that did indeed have this child of the sixties returning to HMV to begin a CD collection. (My first three CDs were Pulp’s Different Class, Ocean Colour Scene’s Moseley Shoals and Radiohead’s The Bends. Then it all got a bit silly with the battle between Oasis and Blur (both of whom I liked depending on mood and both of whom I still quite like) and smacking of sell-out to the powers that be in dropping the knee to Blair and his spin doctors. (My love affair with New Labour was about as short-lived as my fling with Britpop and this too is well covered in the book). Eventually, like with the real thing it came to an end and we were all quite glad. I enjoyed the final two chapters better than the rest of the book. A huge sense of relief in it all being over and the charts could be left to the latest trend of Spice Girls and Robbie Williams and real musicians and poets could get on with developing their craft and regard entering the charts at 29 as an achievement to be celebrated and not a disaster to be sneered at.
I really like John Harris’s work. He is so good at writing about the lives and beliefs of the everyday folk such as the fears of the people of Boston Lincolnshire over immigrants and Brexit or how the people of Milton Keynes are getting on fifty years on that it seems to me a bit of a pity that he focussed this book on the big names of the movement, Oasis, Blur, Suede and Elastica. The last two date the book. I’d have liked more of the lesser bands of the era who perhaps remained truer to any ideals of indie and reflecting their culture to the ones who were battling it out for millions and spending it all on short-term hedonism.
Not that I hold this against Harris. I found the subject matter of this tome (and its a substantial read) heavy going after a while but the style and quality of the writing never faltered. 18 years after he wrote it it has become a historical piece. As with other rock history books I spent a fair bit of time reminding myself of the music. Like every trend since the fifties, there was some very good stuff: very good stuff indeed, but the majority hasn’t dated well. I don’t think I’ll be queuing up to buy my ticket in 2038 to see the Britpop tour with a collection of Suede, Boo Radleys and Sleeper in their sixties and seventies touring Blackpool, Mansfield and Milton Keynes.
I really like John Harris’s work. He is so good at writing about the lives and beliefs of the everyday folk such as the fears of the people of Boston Lincolnshire over immigrants and Brexit or how the people of Milton Keynes are getting on fifty years on that it seems to me a bit of a pity that he focussed this book on the big names of the movement, Oasis, Blur, Suede and Elastica. The last two date the book. I’d have liked more of the lesser bands of the era who perhaps remained truer to any ideals of indie and reflecting their culture to the ones who were battling it out for millions and spending it all on short-term hedonism.
Not that I hold this against Harris. I found the subject matter of this tome (and its a substantial read) heavy going after a while but the style and quality of the writing never faltered. 18 years after he wrote it it has become a historical piece. As with other rock history books I spent a fair bit of time reminding myself of the music. Like every trend since the fifties, there was some very good stuff: very good stuff indeed, but the majority hasn’t dated well. I don’t think I’ll be queuing up to buy my ticket in 2038 to see the Britpop tour with a collection of Suede, Boo Radleys and Sleeper in their sixties and seventies touring Blackpool, Mansfield and Milton Keynes.
February 16, 2021
Led through the rise and fall of what became Britpop, Harris's narrative often focused around the litmus of the Anderson, Frischmann, and Albarn triangle...until that Burnage fellows come around and revolutionize cock(ney) rock for a brief spell.
The book does a great job framing British music in and around the Britpop scene, though it focuses too heavily on its central characters (Suede, Blur, Oasis, Elastica) when there's copy to be made about some of the outliers and coattail riders of the time. Sure, some print is reserved for Manswear but little more than mentions of bands such as Echobelly and Sleeper are made. Radiohead, P.J. Harvey, and some of the more likely shoegaze and pop acts of the time also crop up, but it would have done the book justice to frame those movements as well (such as Kula Shaker's psychedelia, Reef's surfer optimism, Jamiroquai's house and funk tributes, etc.). It could have also been well served to discuss how the Acid House movement of the late 80s that helped launch British indie music into the mainstream also began to resurface (notably, stuff like Space Monkey's "Sugarcane" and the like was bastardized Happy Mondays without the rocking drone).
Yet Harris's book is rather complete. It doesn't even touch too hard on Blur's self-titled album other than to use it as the point when one of Britpop's biggest bands -- and arguably one of its inventors -- made their own move away from the genre realizing there was more fertile artistic journeys to travel. It all gets bogged down in heroin, a changing mainstream marketplace, and inevitably that, like all scenes that came before and have come since, will eventually eat itself by changing the game and then becoming hampered by their own rules.
This was a quick, easy read that makes you long for the days when you could get into a posh downtown center in any major global metropolis for $350k and it not be the size of a closet. The music world moved on and there's still plenty of great music to be found despite the sad state of affairs in the mainstream, but the all-encompassing scenes that came with American Grunge and the UK's Britpop fascinations feel so far away and removed from our modern world despite being 20-25 years ago.
The book does a great job framing British music in and around the Britpop scene, though it focuses too heavily on its central characters (Suede, Blur, Oasis, Elastica) when there's copy to be made about some of the outliers and coattail riders of the time. Sure, some print is reserved for Manswear but little more than mentions of bands such as Echobelly and Sleeper are made. Radiohead, P.J. Harvey, and some of the more likely shoegaze and pop acts of the time also crop up, but it would have done the book justice to frame those movements as well (such as Kula Shaker's psychedelia, Reef's surfer optimism, Jamiroquai's house and funk tributes, etc.). It could have also been well served to discuss how the Acid House movement of the late 80s that helped launch British indie music into the mainstream also began to resurface (notably, stuff like Space Monkey's "Sugarcane" and the like was bastardized Happy Mondays without the rocking drone).
Yet Harris's book is rather complete. It doesn't even touch too hard on Blur's self-titled album other than to use it as the point when one of Britpop's biggest bands -- and arguably one of its inventors -- made their own move away from the genre realizing there was more fertile artistic journeys to travel. It all gets bogged down in heroin, a changing mainstream marketplace, and inevitably that, like all scenes that came before and have come since, will eventually eat itself by changing the game and then becoming hampered by their own rules.
This was a quick, easy read that makes you long for the days when you could get into a posh downtown center in any major global metropolis for $350k and it not be the size of a closet. The music world moved on and there's still plenty of great music to be found despite the sad state of affairs in the mainstream, but the all-encompassing scenes that came with American Grunge and the UK's Britpop fascinations feel so far away and removed from our modern world despite being 20-25 years ago.
September 15, 2024
I’ve had this book in my ‘To Read’ for many years , and finally decided to dive into it after the recent Oasis reunion news and after Blur and Pulp had their own moment last year. I also have a keen interest in politics, and was excited to see how the author managed to link the 90s Britpop movement with Blair and New Labour.
One of my favourite Pulp songs, Cocaine Socialism, touches upon this link already and how musicians were drawn into the excitement of finally an opportunity for change.
I don’t think this book is a political heavyweight for one second, it definitely is more concerned with the amount of drugs thrown around in the 90s than in any serious political message, but I didn’t enjoy it any less for this. We have to consider that this is written in 2003 - Blair was only just losing some public popularity in the commencement of the Iraq war.
I thoroughly enjoyed the journey we were taken in for Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Elastica and Suede. Other bands were mentioned but with not quite the same level of details I would have liked. I was slightly disappointed that later bands were kind of airbrushed out of the scene - I bloody loved Lauren Laverne’s vehicle Kenickie and we didn’t have one mention of them. It did seem like anything from after the 96 Brits was rushed through a bit , even Justine and Damon’s split was covered in just one paragraph - despite the first 2/3 of the book covering them like the modern day Romeo and Juliet, just with shit tons of heroin involved.
I was toying between 4-5.stars, but I think we have to go for 5 as I did thoroughly enjoy it, despite it maybe not being exactly what I was expecting at first.
One of my favourite Pulp songs, Cocaine Socialism, touches upon this link already and how musicians were drawn into the excitement of finally an opportunity for change.
I don’t think this book is a political heavyweight for one second, it definitely is more concerned with the amount of drugs thrown around in the 90s than in any serious political message, but I didn’t enjoy it any less for this. We have to consider that this is written in 2003 - Blair was only just losing some public popularity in the commencement of the Iraq war.
I thoroughly enjoyed the journey we were taken in for Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Elastica and Suede. Other bands were mentioned but with not quite the same level of details I would have liked. I was slightly disappointed that later bands were kind of airbrushed out of the scene - I bloody loved Lauren Laverne’s vehicle Kenickie and we didn’t have one mention of them. It did seem like anything from after the 96 Brits was rushed through a bit , even Justine and Damon’s split was covered in just one paragraph - despite the first 2/3 of the book covering them like the modern day Romeo and Juliet, just with shit tons of heroin involved.
I was toying between 4-5.stars, but I think we have to go for 5 as I did thoroughly enjoy it, despite it maybe not being exactly what I was expecting at first.
July 15, 2023
A worthwhile read for fans of the major players in 90s British pop rock.
Harris provides an intimate and, often times, debauched overview of the very specific musical and cultural phenomenon known as Britpop. The shift was a perfect storm of growing weariness with conservatism, conscientious rejection of American alternative rock, and the arrival of Oasis - truly the X factor of what became known as Britpop for better or worse.
The book has the vibe and tone of an extended music magazine article. Harris follows the same handful of key players over the course of several years with lots of quotes and references to other articles and interviews.
The book maybe gets too bogged down in detailing interpersonal relationships among the various players. But it also serves to highlight how cliquey the circle was. My interest also dipped whenever the through-line of Tony Blair and New Labour was brought up. Britpop ended up being tangled up in the political zeitgeist and rebranding of Britain because both promised optimistic visions of the future for the country. It's definitely a major aspect of the larger Britpop story and offers a poetic parallel of rise and fall for both, but 20 years on from the book being written, I feel it was the most dated angle and I just kind of trudged through Blair's portions until we got back to more Oasis shenanigans.
Overall, I enjoyed it as a thorough exploration and post-mortem critique of one of the last great major Rock'n'Roll cultural movements.
Harris provides an intimate and, often times, debauched overview of the very specific musical and cultural phenomenon known as Britpop. The shift was a perfect storm of growing weariness with conservatism, conscientious rejection of American alternative rock, and the arrival of Oasis - truly the X factor of what became known as Britpop for better or worse.
The book has the vibe and tone of an extended music magazine article. Harris follows the same handful of key players over the course of several years with lots of quotes and references to other articles and interviews.
The book maybe gets too bogged down in detailing interpersonal relationships among the various players. But it also serves to highlight how cliquey the circle was. My interest also dipped whenever the through-line of Tony Blair and New Labour was brought up. Britpop ended up being tangled up in the political zeitgeist and rebranding of Britain because both promised optimistic visions of the future for the country. It's definitely a major aspect of the larger Britpop story and offers a poetic parallel of rise and fall for both, but 20 years on from the book being written, I feel it was the most dated angle and I just kind of trudged through Blair's portions until we got back to more Oasis shenanigans.
Overall, I enjoyed it as a thorough exploration and post-mortem critique of one of the last great major Rock'n'Roll cultural movements.
July 24, 2025
This is honestly one of the best music books I’ve ever read. A must read for any Britpop fan. Even as someone who has followed Britpop history for years, I still found it very engaging and couldn’t put it down. It does a good job at painting the human relationships between all of the main Britpop bands, who in fact drew from a fairly small scene of people.
The writing can be a bit overwrought at times, and there are some questionable inclusions, like the author devoting several pages to Menswear for seemingly no reason and going in detail on the family history of many of the main players. Pulp fans also might be disappointed that they get much less attention compared to the other "big four" bands, sidelined in favor of Elastica. Depending on who you are, you also might not be that interested in the political side-narrative which makes up a significant part of the book. Still, it’s absolutely worth a read.
One note of caution: this is a very “warts and all” account of Britpop, and a lot of it is honestly pretty depressing. It focuses heavily on the toll drugs took on many of the bands and how the scene eventually broke down and fell apart, painting a pretty tragic story in the end.
The writing can be a bit overwrought at times, and there are some questionable inclusions, like the author devoting several pages to Menswear for seemingly no reason and going in detail on the family history of many of the main players. Pulp fans also might be disappointed that they get much less attention compared to the other "big four" bands, sidelined in favor of Elastica. Depending on who you are, you also might not be that interested in the political side-narrative which makes up a significant part of the book. Still, it’s absolutely worth a read.
One note of caution: this is a very “warts and all” account of Britpop, and a lot of it is honestly pretty depressing. It focuses heavily on the toll drugs took on many of the bands and how the scene eventually broke down and fell apart, painting a pretty tragic story in the end.
August 11, 2025
A detailed history of Suede, Blur, Elastica and Oasis (with cameos from Pulp and Menswe@r) up until the “death” of Britpop in 1997, along with some superficial social history.
The book is best as a way to place “Britpop” within its appropriate context, not as a musical genre but as a music journalism label for British bands that initially sought to portray themselves as antigrunge, and then just got applied to any guitar based band gaining a profile from 1995 onwards.
As someone who lived through the era (and saw both Elastica and Oasis live in 1994) it was interesting to see quite how incestuous the scene was, although none of it had already gone unreported in the gossipy parts of the music press at the same time.
Only 3 stars because it is very superficial, focused far far too much on the bands’ drug habits, and because there was not even a single mention of the best album of the era, Mansun’s Attack of the Grey Lantern, which went to number one on the charts in 1997, and is an exemplar par excellence of the Britpop oeuvre with none of the noisy sub-Beatles monotony of much of Oasis’s output nor any of the unlistenable art school quirk that besmirched every Britpop Blur album.
The book is best as a way to place “Britpop” within its appropriate context, not as a musical genre but as a music journalism label for British bands that initially sought to portray themselves as antigrunge, and then just got applied to any guitar based band gaining a profile from 1995 onwards.
As someone who lived through the era (and saw both Elastica and Oasis live in 1994) it was interesting to see quite how incestuous the scene was, although none of it had already gone unreported in the gossipy parts of the music press at the same time.
Only 3 stars because it is very superficial, focused far far too much on the bands’ drug habits, and because there was not even a single mention of the best album of the era, Mansun’s Attack of the Grey Lantern, which went to number one on the charts in 1997, and is an exemplar par excellence of the Britpop oeuvre with none of the noisy sub-Beatles monotony of much of Oasis’s output nor any of the unlistenable art school quirk that besmirched every Britpop Blur album.
March 15, 2021
A fine one-volume look at the mid-90s British rock explosion, but it's what I call a "generals and majors" bio - focused on the big stars and players, uninterested in the minor characters. Harris focuses intensely on the core figures of Britpop (the Gallaghers, Damon Albarn, Justine Frischmann, Jarvis Cocker, Brett Anderson), getting deep into what happened at award show parties, re-creating the mood during media interviews or chart updates. And it's very good on how New Labour captured Britpop, with a fun sidebar about the 1987 "Red Wedge" campaign.
Frustration with New Labour runs through everything else in the book. Harris published it mid-way through Blair's reign, so that's understandable: Everything is colored (sorry, coloured) by dashed expectations. Harris has a lot of fun with the more doe-eyed critics of Britpop, with a very funny digression about Menswear. I could have done with even more of that, and appreciated how sharp Harris was in critiquing the British music press. My only gripe when I closed it is that he didn't chase that even further.
Frustration with New Labour runs through everything else in the book. Harris published it mid-way through Blair's reign, so that's understandable: Everything is colored (sorry, coloured) by dashed expectations. Harris has a lot of fun with the more doe-eyed critics of Britpop, with a very funny digression about Menswear. I could have done with even more of that, and appreciated how sharp Harris was in critiquing the British music press. My only gripe when I closed it is that he didn't chase that even further.
November 12, 2023
Blur have the only happy ending and even 20 years after this book’s publication are still releasing quality music. Suede stands the test of time by having their first two albums be constant listens for me. Elastica has a tragic story that makes the perfection of their self titled album all the more frustrating for what could have followed. This is Hardcore is probably the best album mentioned in the book and Jarvis Cocker is still very cool.
This book, if read right, will take you months to read as you listen to all the bands mentioned that you’re unfamiliar with and go down the rabbit hole of 30 year old interviews and top of the pop performances. As an American, expect to perform lots of internet searches in trying to understand the British political landscape as it pertains to the story.
I met Tony Blair once and I wish I had read this first so I could have asked him about flubbing his pronunciation of David Bowie.
This book, if read right, will take you months to read as you listen to all the bands mentioned that you’re unfamiliar with and go down the rabbit hole of 30 year old interviews and top of the pop performances. As an American, expect to perform lots of internet searches in trying to understand the British political landscape as it pertains to the story.
I met Tony Blair once and I wish I had read this first so I could have asked him about flubbing his pronunciation of David Bowie.
November 1, 2024
This is a mixed-bag of a book - it's clear Harris knows the subject inside out and his access to several top-line musicians is obvious. He also clearly loves music and can convey how excited and extraordinary it can make you feel, and how pop/rock muiscians are the unacknowledged legislators for millions of young people.
HOWEVER! There's a general writing style so often used by British music journalists - what I think of as "Oxbridge Snidiness". It leaves them incapable of writing about drugs with resorting to ludicrous nudging innuendoes - let alone mentioning sex. And there's constant pompous (or ironic) tics like frequently starting sentences "Such was" - "Such was the condition of Noel's house in 1997." "Such was the state of Creation Records in 1996." You yearn for greater style, less denigration, more incisiveness.
Still, if you remember Britpop fondly, this is probably the best book on it because the writer was one of the main journalistic players at the time.
HOWEVER! There's a general writing style so often used by British music journalists - what I think of as "Oxbridge Snidiness". It leaves them incapable of writing about drugs with resorting to ludicrous nudging innuendoes - let alone mentioning sex. And there's constant pompous (or ironic) tics like frequently starting sentences "Such was" - "Such was the condition of Noel's house in 1997." "Such was the state of Creation Records in 1996." You yearn for greater style, less denigration, more incisiveness.
Still, if you remember Britpop fondly, this is probably the best book on it because the writer was one of the main journalistic players at the time.
August 6, 2022
Un libro inmenso. Literal y figurativamente. Sin abrumar, insertados en un diálogo natural y emocionante, el autor inserta una cantidad impresionante de datos y anécdotas sobre esa escena que se celebraba a sí misma en Inglaterra durante los noventa: el britpop. Los datos no son mera trivia, sino que se busca darles contexto y explicación desde el momento histórico que se vivía políticamente en Inglaterra y el mundo. Logró que canciones que llevo treinta años escuchando adquieran toda una nueva dimensión.
March 11, 2018
This is a very well written and well researched book. I highly recommend it. John Harris is a strong writer.
The printed paperback copy I bought, however, was not well produced. It's poorly typeset, poorly copy-edited, and poorly printed, on cheap paper. The interior black and white photos were blurry and low-resolution. Interior printing marks indicate that the book was a POD copy printed by LSI.
The printed paperback copy I bought, however, was not well produced. It's poorly typeset, poorly copy-edited, and poorly printed, on cheap paper. The interior black and white photos were blurry and low-resolution. Interior printing marks indicate that the book was a POD copy printed by LSI.
April 25, 2019
I think this is a brilliant account of the major players of Britpop, an inside look at how they got there. It's great because I have knowledge of that music and the time, and I followed fairly closely at the time. Like other books about music, it's great to revisit that era and get the author's perspective and account of it. I also used youtube and spotify to fire up some of those albums or songs mentioned in the book. It brings it all to life. Great read.
July 19, 2018
Published when New Labour was still full of life, this is an engrossing and level-headed history of arguably the 1990s' most significant musical movement, its movers and shakermakers, as captured by a journalist at the heart of the coverage. As close to a definitive history of Britpop as you're likely to find.
January 13, 2020
Brilliant overview of the leading players in the Britpop era. Insightful, amusing and interesting (i.e. opinionated). Minor quibbles? Too London-centric and not a full overview of Britpop (wot no Longpigs/Super Furry Animals?), but a truly great read for anyone interested in, or pining for, that glorious era of British music.
July 2, 2022
A comprehensive history of a cultural movement based in big personalities and anachronistic music. It’s thrilling.
Side note 1: This would make a great companion piece to “Meet Me in the Bathroom” for a general history of “Indie Goes Mainstream: 1994 - 2011.”
Side note 2: Blur is infinitely better than Oasis.
Side note 1: This would make a great companion piece to “Meet Me in the Bathroom” for a general history of “Indie Goes Mainstream: 1994 - 2011.”
Side note 2: Blur is infinitely better than Oasis.
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