mixtape | alright: a britpop primer

so as i said the other day, i've been listening to a lot of britpop lately, and after a while i got tired of wading through all the shit (hello, northern uproar) and decided to make my own "best of". except this isn't really a best of as such, since that would basically have lots of songs by 4 or 5 bands and no one else. so instead consider this more of a primer of sorts: not necessarily the best but certainly pretty representative of the scene at the time.

as such i've focused only on the years 1994-1996, since that's when the scene was in its prime. i shan't go on about the roots of britpop and tony blair's cool britannia - there's plenty of guff about this elsewhere.

and it should be fairly obvious why i've chosen these particular songs. yes there are lots of other bands i could have included (echobelly, shed 7, embrace, kula shaker...), but these are the ones i liked. with two exceptions: boo radleys were a great band, but "wake up boo!" is an atrocity - but it didn't seem right leaving it out; and i found divine comedy really annoying at the time, but found myself hankering after this song the other day. so there you go.

whatever you made of britpop's empty triumphalism at the time, i think most of these songs have stood the test of time pretty well.

::: oasis - supersonic
::: ash - girl from mars
::: elastica - stutter
::: the bluetones - slight return
::: gene - sleep well tonight
::: dodgy - in a room
::: longpigs - she said
::: ocean colour scene - the day we caught the train
::: pulp - do you remember the time?
::: sleeper - inbetweener
::: menswear - daydreamer
::: suede - the drowners
::: the boo radleys - wake up boo!
::: supergrass - alright
::: the divine comedy - something for the weekend
::: blur - the universal (live)

get.

p.s. actually, come to think of it i disliked quite a few of these songs/bands at the time. blame the fog of nostalgia for my new-found enthusiasm.