Britpop was never a music genre
When we think of Britpop we often go straight to the highlights: Wonderwall, Girls and Boys or Common People.
We think of the rivalries, we think of the apparent Britishness, we often think guitars and indie-rock. But all of this is missing the central feature that made Britpop so powerful — the storytelling.
The music was massive, but it’s the storytelling that created a cultural phenomenon.
Britpop told its fans who they were, who they should dream to be and what they should value. It reflected how they saw the world, how they experienced it and how they could change it.
Britpop was the lives of common people, distilled into 4 minutes and thrown back at them with vigour and reflection that made them feel validated and powerful. It was two fingers to 90s politics and broken promises.
Print the Legend
But here’s the thing — Britpop never really existed.
The things that made it feel special were a collision of circumstance. The roots of the wide-ranging musical styles were already there. And the storytelling? There’s something special in that, but it’s not unique. The 90s rise of the overtly created pop groups highlighted Britpop as something different, but it was something that had been there all along.
Britpop as a music genre isn’t the real story here. The pop groups that were springing up were manufactured, but for Britpop it was the central, apparently defining feature that was artificial.
Britpop is really the genius of good marketing. As a music genre it’s tenuous, but the way it has been storied is something to behold. Somehow it created the impression that Britpop was some kind of new, culturally revealing storytelling. But it really wasn’t. It learned from the best.
There’s Roots and there’s Routes
The stories told in Britpop form a specific kind of picture. They’re not anthems to the wider world, they’re not polemics on social change, but they relate to both those things. They’re a snapshot of a life and distinctly different from the stories that you hear elsewhere in music.
So many songs are about capturing a mood or a feeling, and often in quite a limited way. 3 or 4 minutes doesn’t give you a lot of time for exposition, so most songs get straight to the point, although that point is often vague or abstract. Britpop is often touted as a reaction to the US Grunge scene, which embodies this vaguer sense of storytelling; it’s not about a specific scene, it’s about a general vibe, with the classic example being Smells Like Teen Spirit.
The stories are tangential, meandering ideas — they’re great, I love this music scene, but they’re on a different wavelength. Grunge addressed the sense of futility with the irony removed:
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
The classic Britpop song shows, rather than tells. It embodies not just what it feels like, but what it is to be that person:
I said pretend you’ve got no money
She just laughed and said
Oh you’re so funny
But what Britpop really managed to do was create a sense of shared identity in these experiences. It validated them. It rarely wished for a better future; it wanted to accept the world for what it is, accept your limited control over it, accept your own flaws and those of your community. It wanted you to revel in being alive, with all the drawbacks.
Britpop didn’t focus on the wider world — it made your own world feel wider.
The Story Arc
In many cases it’s easy to trace the musical roots of many of Britpop’s biggest hits. Oasis fans were forever bored by the accusation that they were just Beatles rip-offs. You can’t listen to Primal Scream without imagining Mick Jagger providing the vocals. Many of the influences were drawn from a messy version of 1960s Rock and Roll, but the stories weren’t.
Think of your standard charting songs. What are they about? Mostly love, in some form. They’re specific about very few things:
You’ve been cheated on; you messed up a relationship and regret it; you want someone you can’t have; you’ve dumped me, but I’ll be stronger; I shouldn’t be with you, but I want you anyway; we’re perfect together; I dumped you, and it’s great.
For sure, some of Britpop’s biggest hits ride the same waves, but for the connoisseur these are the hors d’oeuvres. It’s the gateway drug to a different way of doing things.
Wider World
Where pop music falls flat for me is that it rarely steps away from this limiting world view. We get a sense of that feeling, but we never attach it to anything bigger.
That’s what brings me real satisfaction in storytelling, and it’s something that the best of Britpop got right. Take a universal, abstract idea. Turn it on its head: Show me how that idea informs your world in a specific way. By all means show me something from your life, your love life if you must, but show me how it relates to the world around you.
Those wider truths could be hard-hitting; the horrifying impact of child abuse on a tight-knit community:
It might be the alternative love song; a send-up of emerging 90s culture:
It might be alluding to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice:
Or it might be something completely different:
But all of these songs took that notion and stepped outside it. And that’s what makes the best of Britpop so brilliant.
But It Was Nothing New
Some of these songs responded to culture in new ways, or new culture in old ways, but this storytelling itself was nothing new. It’s a feature of all the best damn songs!
I’ll let you search for that influence as you listen. But here are a few hints: Led Zeppelin, The Cure, The Smiths, Culture Club, Bob Dylan, David Bowie. Then there are the more modern acts, like The Killers and The Arctic Monkeys. All of them use this same technique to turn those few minutes into something bigger.
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