The Birth and Impact of Britpop: Mis-Shapes, Scenesters and Insatiable Ones

by Paul Laird

Remember the nineties? Of course you do. Cool Britannia, New Labour, Blur vs Oasis, Geri Halliwell’s Union Flag dress, TFI Friday, “wasssssuuuuuuppppppp”, Opal Fruits turning into Starburst without anyone asking your permission…crazy times.

This book doesn’t have anything to say about Geri’s dress or Opal Fruits but it has lots to say about Britpop. But this isn’t a book about the Britpop you think you know about, this is the story of a truly remarkable period of creativity in British guitar music told through the experiences of someone who was there from the first note of “Popscene” through to the run out groove of “This is Hardcore”. This is the story of the Britpop that didn’t make it onto the evening news or the cover of The Face. This is the story of the bands nobody remembers but that everybody should. This is the story of what it was like to be an outsider in 1991 and be too cool for school by 1994. This is the story of a magnesium flash in British popular music that has, for good or ill, defined British guitar music ever since. Here are Flamingoes and Pimlico, Strangelove and David Devant and His Spirit Wife, The Weekenders and Thurman…and Blur, Pulp, Oasis, Sleeper and Elastica too. These are Britpop memories from someone who was actually there. The definitive story of Britpop…

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2022

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

thanks to the publishers and netgalley for a free copy in return for an open and honest review

This is the authors journey with what was coined Britpop with the music of the early 1990's as he describes his relationship with Blur, Oasis and some of the other bands, yes it is subjective but isn't all music though and did enjoy it overall as bought back memories for me of some of the bands in their early days.

[Kate Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly nostalgic.
Enjoyed this book a lot!
Obviously it was biased toward the author Paul Laird and not everything (in my opinion) was mentioned that should have been - but I really enjoyed it nevertheless!
Liked the nostalgic element.

[Gem ~ZeroShelfControl~ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher, in return for an honest review. This review is based entirely on my own thoughts and feelings.

Overall Rating: 3*
Writing : 3*
Information : 2*
Nostalgia: 4*

I think I need to be a bit more selective with the non-fiction I read, and look at who it’s written by. I don’t know the author from Adam and apart from growing up at the right time, he seems to express his opinion as fact surrounding the music he grew up with. He’s not in the music industry, apart from brushing shoulders with some of the subjects. And the fact he says Oasis’ second album was tired, tedious and tiresome made me dismiss the rest of what he said quite quickly. He seems to want to make an enemy of oasis fans apparently.
Apart from that his writing style was good, and easy to follow. And the nostalgia I got from reading about music and bands I grew up with was great.
Just fell short for me with an over opinionated author.

[Theediscerning · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is, as the early words of the author prove, a blatantly personal look back at Britpop and what it sounded like and what having it in our country and in a man's life might have meant and left behind. It's author is certainly not one to pull any shots – he leaves no doubt he thought grunge tuneless garbage, he pulls back from mentioning, then mentions, teenaged depression more than once – heck, he outs himself as far left before the pages have even dropped the Latin numerals before we've really begun.

His opinions about Britpop music are no less forthright, declaring "Parklife" to be "so dreadful that it makes Mr Blobby sound like 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' by comparison", even though it winning the race to #1 is clearly A Good Thing. Something "...is fine if you like The Fall and hate songs with actual tunes".

As regards the man's style, well, it's as in your face as, well, 808 State's "In Your Face". Every opportunity he gets he takes a run up at describing a song in a way that makes you remember alliteration went out of style in secondary school. Something is "a frantic, frenzied, frenetic, flash of energy", or it's "a bouncy, buoyant, bubbly, blast and blitz of art-school bop" (Oxford commas courtesy the author). But the man and his style are very closely linked – this is someone who stole a kiss from Justine Elastica, and thought she was a "famous person" and a "pop star" because she and her colleagues had had a solitary single out – for about ten days. This is a person who hates the insta-fame and uniformity of TV talent shows yet soaks up the great levels of individuality they find when believing NME's verbiage about Suede being the best band in Britain, or whatever the risible claim was. This is a man who openly admits to using Bing.

So yes, this is someone who seems to clamour for hyperbole and doesn't imagine it might get in the way of a good argument. Towards the end he lists a track as having "attitude, wardrobe, hair and melodies" and you are sure long before then that this may well be his musical wish-list, in order. It never was mine, which is why, despite me living a kid of parallel world to this author – I remember the shrug of disappointment from the people on the same course as I when, having to choose budget-wise between Inspiral Carpets and the "Modern Life is Rubbish" tour, I went to the former that week and not to Blur – our tastes don't really gel here.

And I guess that's why I find myself reading a little catty in this write-up, for the possible reason he is so impassioned, about things I could never be so impassioned about. Some of these bands I'd certainly never heard of; here is he protesting that they should have been #1 ever since they first came out. But either way, what I found was flawed – this is really quite repetitive, and in mentioning a detail or location then being coy about it afterwards, reads like a spread of blog posts turned into a book. His style can certainly rankle, however much kinship you have with the author – he also likes quoting song titles and lyrics as part of his narrative.

Yet, for all the negativity I offer, the book certainly seems to succeed in doing what it wants to do. It does marry the lonesome Scot and his social desolation with the lyrics that may have saved his life. It is a love letter to his constant companions, from a time when he had too few human ones. He lives and breathes this music still, to the extent we get the aforementioned quotes, and in not being encyclopaedic (or even in narrative order) he brings this off the music shelf and into memoir, showing us a young man engaging with what was for him a most formative season in pop history. The title blatantly ignores the fact Britpop dies, yet on pages like these that do mention its passing, it still seems to have a beating heart. He is the resurrection, perhaps. Three and a half stars, partly because I had to come up with some rating or other.

[J Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Birth and Impact of Britpop by Paul Laird is a fascinating look at short-lived but quite influential scene that was called Britpop. Both music history and somewhat memoirish, the book shows how music impacts the individuals who listen as well as the culture within which it lives.

For those who remember it intimately, this will be a chance to relive some of those moments and probably learn a bit about the bands that you didn't know. The amount of familiarity is as much geographically influenced as it is genre influenced. Those in the US will have, depending on how you listened to music at the time, likely have a lower band recognition ratio than those in the UK. That said, the book speaks to those with even a minimal interest in Britpop music itself. I'll try to explain.

First, my situation. During the early 90s I had been to the UK several times and knew a number of people there with whom I shared musical tastes (which is to say broad tastes) but lived in the US. I was also on campus for studies and teaching, so caught anything that came that way (especially since I was a DJ for a time on the university's radio station). So I heard some of the bands and music that didn't quite catch on here. So I am somewhere between the person who listened to either album rock stations or pop stations only and the person who was both physically and culturally closer to the scene.

All that is to say that the nostalgia aspect of this book will, I think, strike far more readers than just those who vividly remember Britpop. I think the idea is pretty straightforward for those people, plenty of memories. Because Laird tells us how the music affected him, what some songs meant in his life (not just what a song "meant"), and how his fandom changed over time the reader has an additional way into the book than just their memories of Britpop. For instance, my high school and early adult years were the 70s (class of '76), yet I could relate to what the music did to and for Laird. It was nostalgic for me less because of the specific music he cites but because of the dynamics of growing up when music is an important part of your life. I think no matter what music you grew up with, this book will have you remembering and reliving some of those moments.

Having gone off on that tangent, I want to make sure to highlight how wonderful the book is in relation to the Britpop scene. The way to read this book is with a playlist handy, or at least with your preferred listening source handy. While it helps in general for (re)capturing the feel it also really drives some of the personal stories home better. The one that comes to mind because I ended up listening to the song several times is his story around Sleeper's What Do I Do Now? Spend some time listening to the tracks Laird talks about, imagine both what he describes about his life as well as what songs from your past might slot in as having the same affect.

I would highly recommend this not only for those who remember Britpop but every music lover for whom music has been their lifelong companion.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Ophelia Sings · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a twentysomething living in London, I worked and played in the beating heart of Britpop. Camden was, at the time, a grubby, glittering, exhilarating mess, and not many of us made it out unscathed.

Many women who were on the scene will confirm that it was a hotbed of misogyny, so it comes as quite a surprise to learn from Paul Laird that misogyny wasn't inherent in Britpop, by dint of the fact that there were some women in bands. Which is a bit like saying that page three isn't sexist because it's pictures of women. However, Laird seems a little confused on this topic, going on as he does to suggest that despite the misogyny of Britpop, some of its most revered stars were in fact female. Which is it? Ask any woman who was there, and she'll tell you.

Laird is similarly confused when it comes to questions of Britpop's jingoism (all those Union Flags, knees up muvver brahhhn, BRITpop... If only there were a clue!). He believes that this cannot be so as there were many non-British acts involved, including those who were 'black and Asian'. Because obviously, you can't be black/Asian and British, right? Sadly, the truth is that racism was rife; to suggest otherwise negates the well documented experiences of the BAME artists and fans who were there.

The writing is often lazy (my 'bones were rattled' so often I felt a little seasick, and every band had a 'statement of intent', it transpires), and there are a few muddled bits - The Spice Girls' debut is noted as being three years earlier than it actually was, for example. And if I had a pound for every Morrissey reference or quote I'd have enough money to pay for lifetime membership to For Britain.

This is a deeply personal take on Britpop, so will never be 'definitive' - everyone's perspective is different, after all. Laird writes with his rose-tinteds perched firmly on his face, and that's okay - it's his take, his memories, his nostalgia (and yes, there's plenty of that here). It's just not cricket, however, to suggest that others' experiences aren't similarly valid.

Still, it was pleasant to be reacquainted with a few bands and names lost to the mists of time - it's not all Blur and Pulp, and some of the lesser-known, less oft recalled artists get a look-in, too. And the fate of lovely Jaime of Marion (arguably one of the finest bands of the 90s) is sensitively handled.

Ultimately, however, there are so many books which do what The Birth and Impact of Britpop sets out to do, but better. Miki Berenyi's autobiography, for one - particularly if you want to truly understand the experience of a female artist with a non-British background during those turbulent years.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Pen & Sword, White Owl for an advanced copy of this music history and cultural study on Britpop and fandom.

Songs have a power over people. The same song can make people mad, make people glad, and make people dance. A song can remind of childhood, bad schooldays, worse love affairs, even lost pets. Mothers want a particular song for giving birth, couples have their song, and at the end of things people get played out by a song, either sung or just read. Growing up I discovered music late, AM music was my family's jam, but when I found songs that spoke to me, I wanted more. Writer and podcaster Paul Laird felt the same way about music that I did, but his was Britpop, and it made his childhood not just bearable, but survivable. In The Birth and Impact of Britpop: Mis-Shapes, Scenesters and Insatiable Ones writes about the music that flooded the airwaves in the nineties, on both sides of the ocean, and what those songs meant for him.

Paul Laird was young, less than middle class and religious which made him a bit of an outsider in many ways. Needing something, anything to make his own, that spoke to him he found a friend, a companion and a love in music. Not just music but Britpop, songs that sang to him, songs that make him feel that someone was getting him, and songs that he couldn't get enough of. The author worked fast food for money to keep up with bands, reading New Music Express, buying singles, even listening to people he didn't like to finds bands. And here he writes about them. All the major bands are covered, Blue, Oasis, Pulp, Suede, with biographies, discussions of songs, music, influences, if they took off, if they crashed to the earth. But mostly about what he thought of them, and how they made him feel.

The book is well written and balanced between bands. The author has is favorites, but this is not history of the scene, nor a guide to great music of the nineties. This is a personal book about a boy, with a soundtrack. As I wrote a lot of bands are covered, even bands that I was unfamiliar with, but living in America in the 90's music info came from MTV, or the cool CD shops that had imports. I really enjoyed the way he presented the bands, and how he wrote about various issues that were present in the scene, sexism being a big thing, and what he thought about it.

I very different music book, which I enjoyed quite a bit. This was personal writing about songs, and feeling like an outsider in your own country, and how music helped. And I got a list of bands that I never heard of, but if Paul Laird likes them well I will for sure give them a listen.

[Lawrence Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully engaging memoir – a very personal love letter to an era, and one that presents a refreshingly different view of the time than the one you’d have in your head if you were but a casual observer, or someone who has learnt about this remarkable period of British music retrospectively. I can’t say I agree with Paul on everything – his penchant for the Inspiral Carpets for example is something I cannot even begin to relate to. But I love the passion, honesty and fearlessness of the writing, and I raced through this book in just a couple of sittings.

Britpop is very difficult to pin down. I love that. As Paul says, “maybe the story of Britpop doesn’t exist”. It changed, evolved, was many things. Was it a musical genre? Some people insist yes, but they’re entirely wrong. It was just way too diverse. Was it an era? Yeah. Well sort of. The truth is that it means different things to different people. When I think of this period, I think of Tindersticks, David Devant & His Spirit Wife, My Life Story, Suede, Saint Etienne, Pulp. One of my mates would probably say Oasis, The Bluetones, Cast, Shed Seven and Ash, and all of a sudden things look very different. But what is undeniable is that between 1992 and 1996, some of the best and most diverse bands to ever come out of Britain were at their peak. Paul’s book is a very personal celebration of this. It’s not _the_ history, but it’s _a_ history, and it’s a valid as any other. For anyone curious about this musical movement I can’t recommend it enough.

[Pam Wright Alfie Blue Puss In Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really did enjoy this book having been 8 right in the Brit pop heyday I lot my knowledge was in retrospect and my love of the music was found long after so it was it interesting to hear a personal perspective of the time.
Parts of the book felt like a little of vanity project but it did not take away telling the story of a truly brilliant time in British culture, for me and I think the author feels the same there is not a better time in British history in terms of youth voice and music. Something that has lasted a longer than other so called youth “fads”

Loved the artwork in the book, was real nice touch.

Currently listening to she bangs the drums while writing this wishing as I often to do that I had been older in the 90’s to enjoy it first hand rather than being a watcher from a far in my spice girl tee.

Be here now and then with this book, for fans who lived it and fans from later generations who long to have been there

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely romp through the nineties. Nice to see some of the less well known bands getting a bit of coverage too. I enjoyed discovering bands I missed at the time like Lick and Soda. Sure, this is all told from the authors perspective, but he is open about that from the beginning, it's not a history book, it's his personal journey through a particular moment in history.

[Clwaddoups · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disclaimer - I know the author. Disclaimer - That is the only reason I read this book cover to cover. Admission - I was alive and living in the UK in the 90's and totally missed Britpop. This book is relatable to anyone who lived for music at some point in their lives and really got/get into lyrics.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's an informative and compelling book, a good introduction to Britpop and the most influential book.
I appreciated the style of writing and found it well written.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine