“I fought in the Britpop Wars. Remember that. I fought so The Libertines could wear military jackets. So The Strokes could act bored and wear skinny jeans. So guitars bands could get songs on mobile phone adverts. Britpop’s legacy may be pervasive, but it has little to do with music.
Nearly every genre has made some contribution to the greater musical cannon - Britpop (and I’ll refrain from defining, defending or damning the word) didn’t. Up until that point, pop had concerned itself with newness. But from 1993 music looked backwards for inspiration.
It is obviously important to state that the ‘Britpop Big Three’ should be regarded as separate. Blur had intellect, cultural awareness and in Coxon and Albarn, rare musical talent; Oasis had charisma, arrogance and heartbreaking melodies, and Pulp’s agenda was as much concerned with art as commercial success. Today I want to talk about all of the other bands.
Maybe a decade of Smash Hits made guitars seem dangerously appealing, but it’s more likely because the mid-’90s saw the emergence of a generation of young music fans to who’d never felt the influence of the ’60s. So every Britpop band can be stripped to the composite parts - the lairy stomp of The Small Faces, The Kinks’ the social commentary, the trippy jangle of The Byrds, the art school bluster of The Who, the whole aesthetic of every era of The Beatles - the list is endless. But there is no legacy because there’s nothing original to bestow. Musically Britpop left us with nothing.
So why do we continue to discuss it? Well, it’s simple. And it’s nothing to do with music.
Culturally, it was important as British music finally learnt to stop looking up to America affirmation of its talents; the music industry was (temporarily) awash with cash and realised pop didn’t have to be packaged and preened to make money.
But the scene’s real legacy was personal. The people who’ll be clamoring to buy any one of the inevitable Britpop box sets won’t be listing to Echobelly or My Life Story expecting a transcendental musical epiphany brought on by the emotional power of the lyrics - they’re simply reminding themselves of what it was like to be young, drunk, invincible and beautiful. When the audience felt like they were part of the band.
Menswear epitomized this. We were openly musically derivative, more interested in drinking and looking cool than playing and recording - we were a band who stood for nothing. People still say they want to see us reform, and I always tell them they don’t: seeing us stagger though ‘Daydreamer’ won’t make them feel invincible once more.
Aside from a tiny handful of albums, was Britpop worth fighting for? Was it worth facing the hordes, shoulder-to-shoulder with Tim Wheeler at Reading ’95? Was it worth Liam threatening my band with violence on a daily basis? Was it worth the fucking awful comedown that followed? I don’t know. Put on a Menswear album and you tell me.”