POSCENE!
Britpop
YOUR AT-A-GLANCE GUIDE TO SOME OF OUR FAVOURITE SUB-GENRES
WHEN THE ERA OF NEW LADDISM MIXED WITH A CELEBRATION OF ANGLOCENTRIC POP CULTURE
STEVEO' BRIEN
What is it?
Though it’s one of the few sub-genres of music even yer mam would recognise, many of the artists that the world considered part of Britpop have always been eager to distance themselves from the tag. A few years earlier, that raft of bands the media attached to the scene – Pulp, Blur, Suede, Oasis, Elastica – would have simply been passed off as indie. Britpop, however, made homegrown indie into a movement with a flag-waving manifesto, celebrating, reflecting and sometimes critiquing Britain in all its loopy, seedy, kooky, stuffy, parochial glory.
Opinions vary on the origin of the word itself. Certainly, rock scribe John Robb was using it in the 80s, but it was Select’s Stuart Maconie who exhumed the term in the early 90s specifically to describe a gaggle of bands that were proudly asserting their Britishness in reaction to the US-accented grunge invasion. And it was that magazine’s cover picture in April 1993 showing Brett Anderson preening against a Union Jack with the provocative coverline ‘Yanks go home!’ which was the cultural starting pistol.