Like Fight Club, the first rule of Britpop was don’t talk about Britpop. Any band from the era would immediately bristle if a hapless NME or Melody Maker journalist ever brought up the genre. Indeed, the recently issued and highly recommended Britpop Top Trumps (we kid you not) has a ‘We’re not Britpop!’ category - Suede score 22, Elastica just 9. Just like punk euphemism ‘new wave’ in the late 70s, Britpop was a club to which few wanted to belong.
Yet 25 years on, the term has acquired a respectability because, guess what? The public liked it! Britpop was always a useful catch-all for the diverse array of bands that emerged during that period. But only now are they lining up to play festivals like Starshaped, happy to be associated with the term.
Of course, it means different things to different people; look up the term on US websites and you’ll find every UK artist from the 90s and often 00s. Some lists (UK included) put Radiohead in their Britpop round-ups which, for reasons apparent to anyone who knows anything, is just wrong: the Oxford quintet may have made two of the best albums of the 90s but they simply did not share the urban irony and retropop aspirations of most Britpop bands.