Death of a Party

On whether Britpop was the last British music scene...

This year has been designated the 20^th anniversary of Britpop, a phenomenon that at the time seemed all-consuming, infiltrating every corner of our cultural consciousness. But my Black Night Crash colleague Adam Bailey poses an interesting question: was Britpop the last true British music scene, and could it or anything on a similar scale ever be repeated?

Firstly, was Britpop even a ‘scene’, or was it simply a genre or type of music? There’s very little in the definitions when it comes to the different shades of popular music. A scene, you feel, should have some geographical element to it, which is not necessary for a genre. Britpop by its name alone has a geographical element to it, and by all accounts much of it did revolve around The Good Mixer pub in Camden, so we are probably safe calling it a scene of sorts. 

The theories behind its success have been well discussed down the years. The most popular is that it was a reaction against the influx of American grunge, which at the time was dominating the guitar music landscape. Grunge itself was seriously strong in ‘scene’ terms, based as it was mainly around one city (Seattle, WA). 

At the time Britain had its own strain of heavily distorted, fuzzy guitar-based scene – shoegaze. While this was going on predominantly in the south, the north also had a vibrant and fairly self-contained scene in the Madchester phenomenon.

So why didn’t either of these catch on and go nationwide (and beyond) in the way that Britpop would a few years later? Madchester’s dancey cross-over element made it commercial enough that a number of the groups under that umbrella enjoyed chart success, though it was very much of its time and so localised (and overtly drug-influenced) that it was unlikely to have much longevity.

As for shoegazing, much as I utterly adore it, the other moniker commonly associated with it – The Scene That Celebrates Itself – tells you all you need to know. Far too introspective and serious to conquer anything beyond its own boundaries, epics of the style such as Ride’s Drive Blind or Slowdive’s Catch The Breeze were never likely to be chart hits in the way Parklife or Common People would be. 

Tellingly, many current bands, including some significant names in America, cite the likes of Ride as major influences. You might not find quite as many who would claim to have been inspired by Menswear. Shoegaze is very much a musicians’ genre.

The clue to Britpop’s success where these others failed again is in the name. It was pop. Stylistically this was a return to the three-minute wonders that the British popular guitar music-loving public have inevitably come back to ever since Merseybeat. 

And it seemed to take over everything in our lives for a year or two. Blur’s involvement with the likes of Damien Hirst, Phil Daniels and Ken Livingstone provided links to the worlds of art, stage, screen and politics, and their battle with Oasis dominating the news ensured that current affairs were covered as well. 

Many are decrying the current anniversary as cynical nostalgia, nothing more than the BBC trying to fill a bit of airtime at a quiet point of year. To that, personally I would say so what? It’s nice to look back. The arguments over when Britpop started and finished (Blur, Pulp, Suede, Radiohead and others were knocking out stuff of a Britpoppish flavour before 1994) and indeed what or who should be included are never likely to be fully resolved. What is not in doubt is that the Britpop ‘thing’ was a major movement. 

And this brings us back to the original question: can anything like that happen on these shores again? Since Britpop there have been other scenes and genres that have achieved reasonable levels of popularity. Britpop’s aftershow party was soundtracked by drum ‘n’ bass as Roni Size and Reprazent won the Mercury Music Prize and drew attention to the Bristol scene. A few years later a large collection of fast and furious guitar pop bands appeared in Sheffield, spearheaded by the now global stars Arctic Monkeys, which with its shared style and location was very definitely a scene.

Why didn’t these become global phenomena? Like Madchester and shoegaze before them, drum ‘n’ bass did not have much commercial appeal, while the Sheffield thing for the most part was too localised, and not stylistically original enough. Where Britpop was heavily influenced by the 60s, and we were ready for that kind of music again, the Sheffield collective were heavily influenced by Britpop and quite simply not enough time had passed.

Where has guitar music got left to go? Is there anything new that people can do with guitars? Everything from 100% unplugged to brain-melting death metal has been covered, with all stops in between. We’ve seen all the cross-over styles you could conceive of working. We have now entered what seems to be a genreless era, where all new bands, as great as many of them are, are simply refinements or tweaks of existing styles, but all off doing their own thing and difficult to categorise. There is nothing especially groundbreaking, and no major movement to speak of.

Britpop itself was of course not particularly original in its musical style; it simply captured a moment. Who knows, maybe in 20 years, something similar will happen with a major revival movement of a similar style. Maybe before that there’ll be a sudden explosion in popularity of metal or folk. 

The way in which we now consume music is also a significant factor. As standardised education and the spread of broadcast media has been credited with eroding differences in language, accent and dialect, the rise of digital music platforms and the Internet has been said to have killed the album, the single and the charts as we knew them. We have such ready access to such an unbelievable wealth of sounds, we would be foolish not to consume as much as possible. 

But this could also mean that the concept of the ‘scene’ has been killed off as well. Physically real communities, scenes and movements will struggle to establish themselves in an age where with the right app on your phone you can listen to local radio stations on the other side of the world if they play the kind of music you like.

The Britpop years were the final few before the Internet took over our lives. This alone, I feel, makes it unlikely that we will see anything on that scale again. For the musician looking to establish themselves this is tricky – being part of a scene or movement can undoubtedly give you a leg up. There are plenty of the Britpop crowd who would never have got signed in another less favourable era.

For the music lover though, there should always be enough people out there producing music in sufficiently different styles to keep everyone happy. We only need to worry that the industry remains strong enough to reward the musicians adequately that they can afford to keep churning out the tunes. It can’t all just be given away free.

Here’s Sleeper…