"EVERY HUGE ARTIST HAS A BE HERE NOW" AKA the UK version

(Whoops, phone)

I get that this is hardcore was against the grain, and not pandering to britpop, but I don't see that as a rejection of "success" - they were still doing big shows, big videos, prospective bond themes. If anything THEY got rejected. No one says ok computer rejected success because it was successful but that too was a step from britpop

Radiohead were never really a Britpop band, though. Even though they were around at the same time, played guitars, were British, and (some) people who also bought Suede/Blur/Oasis etc. records also bought Radiohead records. Because they were around at the same time, and The Bends was a successful record, it was very easy for some to lump Radiohead in with the Britpop thing. In actual fact, they weren't really part of it: they did not write about British life in the same way that Suede, Blur or Pulp did, and nor were they part of the "mad fer it"/"let's be havin' it" Noelrock side of things. They seemed very much apart from it all, like the Manic Street Preachers did circa The Holy Bible. I personally saw Radiohead as being more in keeping with R.E.M. than Suede, Blur or Pulp, and I remember Thom Yorke being extremely scathing of Oasis in the mid '90s circa The Bends, actually. Pulp, on the other hand, were very much considered a Britpop band, and therefore the expectations people had for those two bands were different. That's not to say that Radiohead weren't accused of "rejecting success", though, because they were, except with Kid A rather than OK Computer.

So many bands were "Not Britpop" in retrospect, but were at the time.. St Etienne, Auteurs, Radiohead and so on, Punk was like that too, look back to UK Subs, Sham 69 and so on, whereas what you don't get from looking back is a sense of what the future might hold.

I didn't have St. Etienne down as a Britpop band at the time, either. I definitely had Super Furry Animals down as a Britpop band, even though they detested the term, but they were allowed to quietly develop and grow into their own skin because the weight of expectation placed on them to deliver commercial successes was next to nothing compared to Blur and Oasis. As much as I used to love that band back in the '90s, if you'd told me around the time of Fuzzy Logic that they'd end up releasing 9 albums and become one of the more acclaimed bands of the era, I would have laughed my tits off.

Dunno, I'd have placed a bet on them, maybe for the very reasons you say.

e.g. When punk first happened, there was such a shortage of bands that a lot of the pub rock groups got included (Dr Feelgood, Sean Tyla, Roogalator) most of which looks daft even 6 months later.

I remember '98 being a really strange year... Britpop was obviously dying on its arse post-Be Here Now, but there was still this sense that people were trying to resuscitate it any way they possibly could, because they wanted the moment to last just that little bit longer. I can think of no other explanation for the likes of Embrace and Catatonia.

Yeah I remember this, even starting as early as '96 with bands like Space, Kula Shaker and stuff. '98 really did feel like a nadir for all that though. Britpop grows up and buys a car. But coverage was starting to move in a slightly different direction IIRC.
I remember an article in Select in '98, coming off the back of 'Hello Nasty', no doubt (which felt like a very significant release for me and my friends at that point), about how the eighties were due for a come-back. As a teenager who'd rejected the majority of 80s music until then, the concept of reviving styles and fashion from that decade felt very alien to me. A Q poll of the 100 best albums ever only featured a tiny clutch of albums from the eighties, which goes to show how much the 90s had felt like a rejection of that decade.
Somehow though, being sold the eighties as a revival of graffiti and old school hip-hop culture seemed enough though. And then a few years later of course, the world rediscovered electro and post-punk and it was like the eighties had never gone away.
But this all made for a general shift away from UK guitar music as a going concern for quite a while. Select closed down and the NME lost customers. Teen-oriented Britpop begat adult-oriented Travis/Coldplay/Texas. Pitchfork became the go-to place for alternative music news. Electroclash, garage and mashup culture opened up the realms of dance music for a lot of former indiekids. As for indie-rock, the US Amerindie scene seemed a lot more inspired and leftfield in the 2000s than much of the UK landfill set. Overall, there was a noticeable shift in interest away from Manchester and London, over to Europe and the US.
The rise and fall of Britpop is something I don't think UK music has ever really recovered from, even with the mid-2000s Arctic Monkeys/Libertines axis, it wasn't really enough to make something significant out of. Britpop was, as is well-documented, a shallow media-led construct with a torrent of terrible bands involved. While I'm happy that it gave us Modern Life Is Rubbish, Wake Up! and Different Class, there's not a lot to mourn about this scene. I do kind of miss feeling that the UK is a significant 'world-power' when it comes to music though (he says while ignoring the huge swathes of dance music influencing global dancefloors).
Just looking at my EOY albums list and I'm surprised to find there are as much as 7 UK acts out of 25 on my list - one of whom is based in Berlin, another a comeback from the 90s. I have a feeling that at one point the UK would have dominated my list though.

Once the media channels opened up, the Americas came in and took over, thanks to having all the money to start with.

Oasis hit the top, and when they got there they kicked back with a bottle of champagne and went Wahayyy. Whereas when Coldplay and U2 hit the top, they kept working as much as they had before. What Holly Johnson called the Shooting Stars principle.

away from britpop : how about goldie and his "saturnz return" release ?

big hopes after the success of the debut, dashed by a fucking dreadful hour long dirge that opens the sonic marathon.

seems to have killed his solo career dead (other than compilations/mixes/tv etc .. ).

I'd forgotten just how big The Verve were during that 97/98 peak - Urban Hymns the 17th best-selling album of all time in the UK.

The gig that was televised on prime time saturday night BBC1

Turrican otm re: In It For The Money. I thought I Should Coco was tremendous (especially the drumming), and IIFTM almost as good, with a similar nearly-off-the-rails band dynamic happening. But after that, every Supergrass record I heard was markedly blander than the previous one. Coincidentally or not, the drumming suddenly lost the character that had thrillingly propelled their early records.

Loved I Should Coco but never heard any other SG albums until, strangely, Road to Rouen which was... okay I guess. I do have a huge soft spot for the singles on the s/t album though and things like Moving and Pumping On Your Stereo are songs as big as any by Supergrass in my mind.

away from britpop : how about goldie and his "saturnz return" release ?

big hopes after the success of the debut, dashed by a fucking dreadful hour long dirge that opens the sonic marathon.

doesn't sound like an album that sold as much as its predecessor but in retrospect looked like diminishing returns

there must be some 70s and 80s candidates!

Seven and the Ragged Tiger?

that was one I was thinking of I must admit

Carole Kings follow up to "Tapestry" (10XPlatinum), "Music" (1XPlat)

Saturnz Return is rubbish but in an admirable way - a demented, self-important, coke-inflamed Major Statement that nobody asked for. I seem to remember Marcello believing it was a misunderstood masterpiece. It fell off a cliff though and he never made another studio album so it's a Neither Fish Nor Flesh rather than a Be Here Now.

I remember an article in Select in '98, coming off the back of 'Hello Nasty', no doubt (which felt like a very significant release for me and my friends at that point), about how the eighties were due for a come-back. As a teenager who'd rejected the majority of 80s music until then, the concept of reviving styles and fashion from that decade felt very alien to me. A Q poll of the 100 best albums ever only featured a tiny clutch of albums from the eighties, which goes to show how much the 90s had felt like a rejection of that decade.

Yeah! It's easy to forget in this day and age where music from the '80s is being embraced without prejudice, but in the '90s there was nothing less cool than the '80s. Bands were quite content to look back at the '60s and '70s, but if I recall, the '80s always seemed to be written off as a huge mistake. There were exceptions of course, but the bands from the '80s getting praised in the '90s were naturally the ones that seemed to have a direct influence on '90s indie music: The Smiths, The Stone Roses etc. Synthpop? Forget it. Totally uncool.

When is Ed Sheerans turn gonna come?

http://www.nme.com/news/noel-gallagher/82202

i think i was maybe thinking of the supergrass s/t instead of IIFTM? idk. nothing quite ever lived up to 'i should coco' either way.

If anything the bombast of the 80s, esp mid to late of Live Aid and career resurgences of 40 something acts seemed like the most alien thing ever by about 1997. Anything cool from the 80s in 97 had to start small, not get much bigger, and dominated by distorted or jangly guitars - and definitely not processed

Was thinking about that odd stretch when The Beautiful South sold millions upon millions of their greatest hits. Looked at its numbers, surprised to see it was actually number 2 biggest of its year (1994). Number 1 = Cross Road, Bon Jovi.

Synth pop, 80s in 90s - ummmm I am sure we were all 'there' but this sounds like a v iffy generalisation - there was a brand of synthpop that even corny indie fux0rs (eg me) always accepted - soft cell, human league.

nothing quite ever lived up to 'i should coco' either way.

― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Tuesday, January 13, 2015 5:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Again, I disagree.

Dunno man, this is possibly a generational thing but the eighties signified to us (16 y/o, grungey britpop kids) little more than ridiculous shoulder pads, far too much make up, mullets, slap bass, fretless bass, Stock Aitken and Waterman, and not much else. The Human League were doing 'One Man In My Heart'. And really you didn't really hear all that much about the Smiths (but certainly the Roses) when reading the mainstream indie press. The only eighties music I remember kids at school being into was stuff like Metallica. Other than that the 80s were largely considered as a bit of a joke - the decade fashion forgot etc... I think a lot of bands may have played a part in that - Nirvana's nihilism and rejection of excess/flamboyance, Oasis's Beatles and mod worship etc...
Blur had a couple of secret new wave excursions but it was only in retrospect that I became aware of them as such. And then there was talk of a few bands channelling this really obscure act called Wire who no one's ever heard.
what I'm saying is that it's incredible how the bulk of what the eighties really were about was kept under wraps to those who didn't know any better. I remember falling in love with a seventies King Crimson album and then hearing one of their 80s records and remarking about how much the latter one had aged compared to the 70s one. These days I think I would feel the opposite.

That was x post to woof

adult-oriented Travis/Coldplay/Texas

o rly

Dog latin's thesis there is kind of impaired by the fact that Texas's own New Jersey (i.e. The Hush) was actually released 2 weeks before The Man Who.

At the time that Texas were conquering the world in 1997, Travis were releasing songs with titles like "All I Want To Do Is Rock", "U16 Girls", "I Love You Anyways" and (lol) "Tied to the 90s".

So not really adult-oriented.

It fell off a cliff though and he never made another studio album so it's a Neither Fish Nor Flesh rather than a Be Here Now.

TTD kept making albums (and still is, tbf) - the next one went top ten both here and in the UK

it's true that the BritPop mob preferred the 60s and 70s, although there were a few 80s albums/artists that were faves of Britpop bands. Kate Bush (Suede mentioned her every chance they got), New Order, Prince, Smiths, Stone Roses, Mary Chain maybe.. but yeah the 80s pop canon barely got a look in.

Yeah Travis's first album was very different from their commercial peak.

was it any good though?I would think not.

i never knew before today that stereophonics had FIVE number one albums on the trot. i'm not sure i could even name five stereophonics songs tbh

xpost no it was really bad IIRC, save for one Lennon-esque song that seemed to pre-empt their later ballady work.

(xp to dog latin's previous)
ah right - I'm 7-odd years older than you, which makes the difference - more or clearer experience of the decade, more solid memories.

yeah it's that - i'm sure if you were there at the time you'd remember the eighties as they were. for us '90s kids it did feel like pop-culture's sinkhole

i quite liked all i wanna do is rock at the time but hated everything else with a passion so never actually heard the album

xp

wow 5? I didnt know that either. How did they get so big?

I grew up in the 80s and hated it im like that guy in the clickhole article who preferred the 90s lol

If the music of ten years previously ISN'T hugely unfashionable and lame to the kids then something's gone wrong somewhere along the line. Even after over a decade of 80s revival it still feels like the albums of the 80s are under-canonized relative to the 60s, 70s and 90s. But then the late 80s is also viewed as one of the most explosively creative periods ever in pop, so six of one...

If we're talking 80s albums though then both the Human League's Hysteria and Kate Bush's The Sensual World both feel like they qualify.

I still find I have a huge knowledge gap of music from circa 86-90 compared to other areas and I attribute this deficit in many ways to what I said upthread. Late 80s production and style makes me very wary on the whole. In my mind I see it as a transitional no man's land between 'old music I enjoy' and 'music from my time that I enjoy'

There's a few years at the end of the nineties that I kinda feel the same about. All nu-metal and plastic-pop, until The Strokes came and saved the day. Even though I don't really like The Strokes anymore, hard to get beyond that thinking.

i know i'm biased cos i was of a certain age during the period, but 86-89 is golden years stuff for me.

I hated it compared to 80-85

UK-specific 80s hugeness: maybe Erasure? but they BeHereNow-ed in the 90s, so, not really.

could make a case for Chorus (anticipated follow-up to two colossal number 1 albums; massive right from the outset but 'only' went 1x platinum),

except they followed this with Abbaesque and the Pop! singles collection which represent their single/album commercial pinnacles,

so it's probably I Say I Say I Say - Always was luxurious and this return treated as A Big Deal at the time but it didn't quite go all the way; album topped the charts but did not linger and now the casual fans were all buying Parklife instead. 18 months later they returned again and didn't have any casual fans left.

I'm the same about 98-00 Frederik. That's an indefinable inter-period in my mind where things were breaking down but not really building up. I found solace in older records, IDM and post-rock but I just couldn't get behind any popular styles (nu-metal, Ibiza trance, fratboy hip-hop, ska-punk, post-Britpop, 'cheese' i.e. Steps, S Club 7 (do university campuses still have 'cheesy tunes' nights? it's all i remember being advertised at our SU), chillout music etc) I'm sure there must have been some great music that I totally slept on, but I just remember being appalled by the vast majority of what was happening at the time. To me it all seemed so vapid and egregious. Being young suddenly seemed to be about shiny shirts and hairgel, expensive drinks, expensive superclubs with overpaid DJs, snotty brats telling their moms to fuck off, getting wrecked in Ibiza etc.. None of it made sense to me, politically, socially... I never got into the Strokes or the Hives or the Libertines either but still see 2001 as a good pivotal year for new music of all kinds.

When we're talking about 'Be Here Nows', are we actually framing these in terms of commercial success? I'm confused. So many artists' worst music happens to be their most successful.

Would the Boo Radleys' 'Wake Up!' count? It was the album that followed the indie smash 'Giant Steps' which broke them into top ten territory with a huge single that got played ad nauseum on breakfast radio. I like the record, but it comes nowhere close in terms of vision and ambition as GS and it kind of spoilt the band. They released two more albums but on the back of Wake Up Boo, they started being labelled as cheery one-hit wonders and commercially never recovered.

ah, remember when "Wake up boo" got played as much as "Bang bang into the room" does now?

If we're talking 80s albums though then both the Human League's Hysteria and Kate Bush's The Sensual World both feel like they qualify.

I've been looking up the career trajectories of some of the other new pop-era types. Maybe Simple Minds' Good News From the Next World fits the bill - first single went top 10 but only one other charted, a gold album following a run five platinum/multi-platinum ones (although the previous couple had both sold less than the one before).

xposts as far as 2014 is concerned, and looking at this year's P&J list, I'm worried about entering another musical 'depression' right now. After at least two amazing years of music, I couldn't help but feel like 2014 was a bit of a hump. I didn't have any trouble compiling an EOY list, but I'm feeling a noticeable qualitative dip, or a bit of an exhaustion of 'new ideas' compared to what i was hearing in 2012/2013. On a more positive slant, this most likely means that new exciting things are round the corner.

I just remembered Finley Quaye's 'Vanguard' exists, though I think that's the 2nd Darkness album bag of flops