OUTSIDERS
LIVE. RARE. UNRELEASED. 1990-2025
THERE’S A MOMENT IN THIS MONTH’S SUEDE feature where their keyboardist/guitarist Neil Codling is considering the band’s unlikely longevity. “The fact that we’re still here, despite being outsiders in whatever sphere you care to look at, must be a motivating factor,” he tells Keith Cameron. “Stubbornness is in our DNA.”
Suede’s trajectory over the past 35 years has been an odd, compelling one – a band who triggered a seismic cultural upheaval, but were too imaginative and unclubbable to be truly part of the Britpop scene they helped create. This month’s very special MOJO CD, fittingly named
Outsiders
, makes clear Suede’s significance, as it maps their journey from the gaudy new-glam progenitors of the early ’90s, to the post-punkish elder statesmen of the 2020s. Along the way there are artful detours, formative demos, explosive live tracks, unreleased nuggets, and even a Noël Coward cover.
It’s been a career of radical and often fashion-defying change. But these 15 tracks selected by the band and MOJO also show how Suede’s aesthetic vision has simultaneously held firm for over three decades. They’ve drawn on the rich subversive traditions of British art-rock, from Bowie and Roxy Music to Public Image Ltd and Magazine, and remade it all in their own uncompromising image. And now, finally, it’s time to add these outsiders to the canon.
1 THE DROWNERS
Boys off the stage: Suede in 2025 (from left) Simon Gilbert, Richard Oakes, Brett Anderson, Neil Codling, Mat Osman.
Kevin Westenberg, Dean Chalkley