Pulp adjacent, this is an interesting article about the rise of Britpop nostalgia. I must admit that 30 years down the line from it's Annus Mrabilis I've been thinking about it alot myself.
Yeah...Pulp understandably hate the word/scene but Mark lived with a Menswear, Russell socialised with another, Steve lived with an Elastician, Supergrass supported Pulp supported Blur. Coxon told Pulp that Blur liked Pulp's music and would nick from them. Russell was jealous of Girls And Boys being more Pulp than Pulp could be.
Musical ideas, bodily fluids, banter, coke presumably, were all nicked or exchanged by various participants including Pulp.
I don't think Miranda Sawyer - who incidentally can't get enough of her Britpop youth, compering on various Blur, Pulp and Suede retrospectives in recent times - is strictly correct that "Pulp didn't change". They did, they started to write much better songs that appealed at a mass level and for once their timing was impeccable.
I think a big part of it is to do with class. All the major Britpop big bands were state school kids (even Albarn) who wrote about their lives. After that generation, music skewed almost entirely to private school performers. They might be more technically proficient, but they never had the same urgency or understanding of the common experience. I think it's that authenticity that gives it its longevity.
Yeah...Pulp understandably hate the word/scene but Mark lived with a Menswear, Russell socialised with another, Steve lived with an Elastician, Supergrass supported Pulp supported Blur. Coxon told Pulp that Blur liked Pulp's music and would nick from them. Russell was jealous of Girls And Boys being more Pulp than Pulp could be.
Musical ideas, bodily fluids, banter, coke presumably, were all nicked or exchanged by various participants including Pulp.
I don't think Miranda Sawyer - who incidentally can't get enough of her Britpop youth, compering on various Blur, Pulp and Suede retrospectives in recent times - is strictly correct that "Pulp didn't change". They did, they started to write much better songs that appealed at a mass level and for once their timing was impeccable.
The big one, of course, being what Steve got up to in Paris...
Yeah and it is weird seeing Alex James promoting the music festival on his farm this weekend in the media, and talking about his "Britpop Classical" headlining group. He's trademarked the B* word for his English champagne. Can only imagine Damon, Graham (and Jarvis) shaking their heads in disdain.
Being labelled with a lazy term and have it be a millstone around your neck forever must rankle with any creative person - and it seems more reductive when you read the various books by Pulp members you get a sense of how varied (and non-British) a lot of their inspiration was.
It would be fascinating to replay the whole thing from 1993 again without the B-word being invented, to see if Pulp would have had the same success. There's things that happened along the way that carved a commercial path for Pulp - the emergence of Suede who which allowed for 90s British bands to flirt with sexuality and the mainstream while singing about the minutiae of life on the margins, to the coining of the Britpop word around the same time and the famous Select magazine cover. Grunge fading with Kurt Cobain's death and Oasis releasing their debut single and Pulp their major label debut in the same month also feel like milestones.
Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne wrote a great article about the "scene" for Q about 12 years ago, I'm pretty sure I typed it out on here at the time but have done a search on the forum and can't find it. Basically saying that between roughly 1991-'93 it was quite a creative time with oddballs like them, Pulp, Denim, Suede doing their own version of pop music but once the whole Blur v Oasis thing took shape, too much of it curdled and it turned bland and blokey.
I've been mulling over whether the whole 'Britpop' explosion was really just the apotheosis of the Indie scene that started to really explode with the C86 cassette. Perhaps it would have always happened. Bands like Pulp, Blur and Oasis were already starting to achieve before 'Britpop'. The bands that came in the wake of the triumvirate were mostly on the downward curve' like Menswe@r, Rialto and Sleeper (btw I like Sleeper and I like Louise). It had a sliw rise, a plateau and a pretty steep drop off.
Re 91-93 it reminds of how the music press tried to create a scene called Crimpleneism that featured St Etienne, Pulp, World of Twist, Suede et al. I really liked that period but there was a lit of crap Indie around as well.
-- Edited by saw119 on Saturday 23rd of August 2025 03:17:31 PM
