There Must Be More Than This - British Pop Without B***pop

By Paul Laird

Author of "The Birth And Impact Of Britpop: Mis-Shapes, Scenesters And Insatiable Ones"

Cool Britannia.

Yawn.

I’m not pretending that there is any point in my writing this.

I can’t think of a single reason why you should read it.
It seems unlikely you will enjoy it.

It’s basically one of those risible, miserable, listicles.

Wow, someone I don’t know is going to tell me what the best songs ever, ever, ever, are.

Talk about being boring.

What’s the big idea?

To tell the story, or a story, of the British music scene in the nineties without including a single song that is part of the story of B***pop.

Why?
That’s easy.

Because I am beyond tired of hearing about, and writing about, the same fucking songs over and over and over and over again.

“It’s the 37th anniversary of Cor Blimey by The Desert Boots today!”

Whoop.
Dee.
Fucking.
Doo me a favour.

It’s not that some of those records weren’t wonderful.
They were.
Christ I wrote an entire book about how amazing those bands and those songs were.

Not that any of the people in the online B***pop “community” bothered to let you know…apparently my constantly digging out Paul Weller, Kula Shaker, and Cast and my tiresome snide saw me excommunicated.

Colour me bothered.

But the British music scene in the nineties did not start and end in the toilets of the Good Mixer.

Shock.

“Nuisance” by Menswe@r isn’t one of the greatest albums of the decade.

Horror.

Oasis were terminally boring from the moment they finished recording “Definitely Maybe”.

Blasphemer.

What.
Eva.

Here then are the records which helped shape me in the nineties…

In 1990 Depeche Mode released one of the greatest albums of their incredible career; “Violator”.  It included huge hit singles like “Policy of Truth” and “Personal Jesus”, as well as the divine “Enjoy the Silence”.  A dark, brooding, raw, personal, revelatory, romantic, and at times erotic, collection of electronic pop at its very best.  And if there is a more moving experience in pop history than “Waiting for the Night” I haven’t heard it…it isn’t a communal listening experience, it has to be heard alone, in a dark room, with your eyes closed, and with your heart broken.

This was also the year when the Pet Shop Boys released “Behaviour” and decided that they would include the best single of the decade…possibly of any decade…with “Being Boring”.  Certainly it is the best PSB single…and in my book they are the greatest singles band in the history of British pop music.  It is both art and arty.  Like so many of their songs it is ferociously modern and futuristic, and yet utterly timeless and recognisably “pop”.  There is a sense of icy detachment coupled with a heart quivering emotionality.  Nothing, and I really do mean nothing, that any other British artist released in the nineties comes close. 

In October of this year Select magazine gave away a free tape on the front cover - you remember those things, yes?  It was always so exciting when Melody Maker, NME, or Select would feature one of these tapes…curiously when they shifted to CD I didn’t get the same thrill.  This one was called Red Tape and featured Pixies, Lush, Dead Can Dance, Nick Cave, Depeche Mode, and a few others. 

The stand-out moment on the Red Tape though was “Pitch the Baby” by Cocteau Twins.  Despite being a wee Scotch (I know it’s a drink, but I also know it really winds up a certain type of Scotch person) indie kid I didn’t know anything about the band.  Listening to the peculiar, dream-like, and ethereal, delights of the song I fell instantly in love.  “Heaven or Las Vegas” may have been their sixth album, but it was my first and it’s the one I will always love more than any other.

1991 was the year that the B***pop story really started, but what is much more interesting is that it was also the year when Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty became the biggest selling singles act in the world with their Discordian, conceptual art, pop-art, project the KLF (Kopywrite Liberation Front…or King Lucifer Forever?).  There is NO argument to be had about the fact that the KLF were the most important, and most interesting, thing to happen in British pop in the nineties…even if the music had been rot that would have remained the case.  But the music wasn’t rot, it was fab.  “The White Room” was their fifth album, and the moment when they fully realised their goals.  Don’t trust anyone who claims to have an interest in nineties pop culture but is incapable of discussing the significance of the KLF.

Another project with links to Jimmy Cauty was The Orb.  Their debut album “Adventures Beyond the Underworld” was another important release in 1991.  Featuring the almost too delightful “Fluffy Little Clouds” the post-Cauty album is one of the most important in the history of British dance/electronic music.

Neil Tenant, Bernard Sumner, Johnny Marr.

Pet Shop Boys, New Order, The Smiths.

Yes please.

As key players in three of the most important, and influential, bands in British pop music, the idea of them pulling together, and pooling their creative processes, was almost too much for a kid like me to deal with.

The results of this more than Holy union was Electronic and their eponymous debut album…which actually arrived 18 months after “Get the Message” was released…and it was as magnificent as one might suspect.  What was especially delightful about this project was the fact that it paired “guitar music” bloke Marr with electronic music faces Pet Shop Boys and New Order.  That should have created a willingness to step outside of the world of “guitar music” (I cannot tell you how much even typing those words pains me) but it didn’t.

It is a peculiar thing that people in the world of electronic music (and other genres like hip-hop) are desperate to meld their music with traditional pop forms, and many musicians in that more traditional world are fascinated by electronic music, but the fans of the trad will not countenance the idea that electronic music may have something to offer them.

Go figure.

Perhaps the most significant/important album of the year came from Massive Attack who released their debut album “Blue Lines”.  It is the first trip-hop album and introduced the country to the peculiar, and incredible, music that was formenting/fomenting in certain corners.  It filtered certain American influences through the lens of English artists and created something unique.  

My friend, and podcast co-host, Nick Amies recently asked me; “What is the best Morrissey album, and why is it “Your Arsenal”?

He was right.

1992’s “Your Arsenal” is the most complete Morrissey album…a glam rocking, foot stomping, heart breaking, hymn to some vision or other of Albion, it is the solo album that is more than capable of standing shoulder to shoulder with anything he recorded while a Smith.  While many may argue that “Vauxhall and I” is his best work, and I understand why, the truth is that “Your Arsenal” is one truly flawless album of his career.

A new voice arrived on the scene, one of those too rare individuals in pop music who deserve to wear the labels of artist and poet.  PJ Harvey unleashed/unveiled her talent and her soul with her debut album “Dry”.  She has spoken of seeing the album as perhaps her only chance, and so everything went into it.  The process of writing and recording it must have been emotionally exhausting.  She instantly transcended the usual categorisations, she was impossible to put in a box.  The only remotely comparable artist is Patti Smith…and that is about the highest praise it is possible to bestow on anyone.

The Prodigy delivered their debut album, “Experience”, and became, thanks in large part to Keith Flint’s punk aesthetic, the dance act it was acceptable for indie kids to like…although I’d wager that extended only as far as “Firestarter”, and it certainly didn’t go as far as investigating the wonderland that is dance music.  

It’s tricky to try and explain how much of an impact a track like “Out of Space” had on me when I first heard it.  Publicly I was presenting myself as a Morrissey disciple…prattling on and on about “The Leather Boys” and the New York Dolls while, privately, I was still spinning the electro pop that had so thrilled me just a few years earlier.  Kids are weird.  Teenagers are even weirder.

Much of the discussion around British music in the nineties, particularly in certain curious corners of the internet, centres around bloke rock like Oasis, Cast, Northern Uproar, Ocean Colour Scene, and post “Wild Wood” Weller.  It’s easy to understand why those bands asked very little of their audience - they didn’t challenge them, or introduce them to things that would require them to think about existing beliefs, in the same way that a band like The Smiths had.  They just wrote songs, almost nursery rhyme like in their simplicity, that you could bellow along to.

Nowt wrong wi’ that.

But there were acts who did challenge all sorts of things, refuseniks, noiseniks, who were determined to do things on their own terms.

In 1993 Huggy Bear released “Taking the Rough With the Smooch” - inspired by both punk and the riot grrrrrl likes of Kathleen Hanna’s Bikini Kill.  Here was a band who had things to say, and who wanted to say them in ways that didn’t require “baby I love you”, wonder walls, or a copy of “Rubber Soul” to say them.  They were fiercely political, aggressive, unapologetic, and fucking brilliant.

I can vividly remember seeing them appearing on The Word on Valentine’s day that year - they looked like the coolest kids in the world.  Everything about them was perfect.  The fury with which they performed “Herjazz” was astonishing…a few years later I saw At The Drive-In do something similar on Jools Holland, and while there could be no doubting their authenticity, they looked like a pale imitation of Huggy Bear.

It’s obvious why they didn’t become huge stars, they were just too spiky, too threatening, and too much for a mainstream audience - even Henry Rollins looked a bit uncomfortable as members of the band, and their entourage started causing chaos in the audience after their performance.

Not a single one of the bands who would go on to dominate the charts and the covers of the music press between 1994-1998 had even an ounce of the righteous fury of Huggy Bear - the sorts of boys who are, even as we speak, struggling to stop themselves from ejaculating at the prospect of Oasis reforming in order to “celebrate” the anniversary of “Morning Glory” were never going to be able to deal with a band like this.

I’m going to mention another riot grrrrl act here; Skinned Teen, who released an E.P called “Karate Hairdresser”.  6 songs on a 7” single, each of them the sound of teenagers being empowered by the idea that pop didn’t have to mean being manufactured, and who were inspired by the DIY aesthetic of punk and the U.S riot grrrl scene.  I think maybe a few hundred people ever heard these songs, but those of us who did loved them then, and nothing has changed.  They also released their only album, “Bazooka Smooth”, later in the year…which is worth owning just for “Pillow Case Kisser”!

One of my favourite albums of the nineties is “From the Heart of Town” by Gallon Drunk.  They had supported Morrissey on the North American leg of the “Your Arsenal” tour in 1992 - and that was all I needed to find out more.  Their sound was a mix of blues, jazz, maybe even a hint of rockabilly at times.  The album was a sonic journey into the dark heart of life in a big city.  A genuine lost classic of the decade.

Finding things that are not connected to the B***pop story grows increasingly difficult from this point - even things that the artists insist are not B***pop are viewed as central to the moment; Suede’s eponymous debut is, for people like me, a crucial part of the era…but the band want NOTHING to do with it, Boo Radleys released “Giant Steps” and it is, very definitely, not a B***pop album but because of the enormous success of “Wake Up Boo” a year later it isn’t possible to separate them from the thing, and despite Luke Haines constant, loud, insistence that his work has nothing to do the wider culture, to the extent that he paid a musician NOT to play on an album by Gene, The Auteurs are also co-opted into the scene.

For me each of those albums are simply great albums, and none of those artists are really part of the B***pop story - and I say that fully aware of the fact that I included Suede as a major part of my book on the period.

Hypocrite.

Moving on.

Despite 1994 being the moment when you know what really began its dominance of the music scene in the UK, it is much easier to find albums by UK acts that don’t form part of that story.  Morrissey (him again) released another incredible album, “Vauxhall and I”.  A much more delicate, wistful, collection of songs than “Your Arsenal”, and one which seemed much closer in spirit to The Smiths.  With references to 1950’s and 1960’s cinema (both “Brighton Rock” and “Billy Budd” feature prominently), songs of loneliness and longing (“Now My Heart is Full” and “Hold Onto Your Friends”), and a constrained rage against the machine he has always stood in opposition to (“Speedway”) it is a beautiful thing.  In “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get”, you have one of those moments where the joy of the title is matched by the music, arguably this is his greatest single of the nineties.

Trip-hoppers Portishead released their debut album “Dummy” and revealed that Bristol was home to a music scene that was completely untainted by the heavy ghost of Britain in the sixties.  Instead artists like Portishead were melding hip-hop beats with electronica, and adding splashes of everything from jazz, funk, reggae, dub, and sampling whenever it felt right.  “Dummy” is the soundtrack to a wonderful film that hasn’t been made (I think I might have pinched that from the review of the album in the Melody Maker at the time…one of the weeklies certainly described it like that).  It has a hint of the strange, otherworldly, feeling of David Lynch.

Some of the trad rockers desperately try to find a way to fit Manic Street Preachers into the B***pop story - mainly because they really enjoyed hurling pint pots filled with piss over the leopard print and mascara true believers of the band when they performed “A Design for Life” and its line about only wanting to get drunk.

Back off lads.

Back.  The.  Fuck.  Off.

“The Holy Bible” is the antithesis of whatever B***pop was - whether that is the bloke take on it all, or the fey indie boy version people like me seek to present.  There are no cover versions of “Daisy Daisy” here, no hymns to walking in the rain with the girl you really fancy, and no choruses to bring everyone in the pub together.

It is relentlessly bleak, violently nihilistic, ferociously honest, and a terrifying glimpse into the mind of a man who is teetering on the brink of losing all control of himself.  As early as 1991 Richey Edwards had, very publicly, revealed himself to be a man plagued by demons.  After a gig in Norwich he confronted Steve Lamacq, whom he believed had questioned his commitment to his art, and cut “4-Real” into his forearm with a razor blade - the wounds would require 18 stitches.  “The Holy Bible” was the sound of Richey’s mind, and his diaries, being played out for the world to hear.  

While the band may have enjoyed huge success with “Everything Must Go” following the disappearance of Richey, and while they are often lumped in with the wider culture of the nineties, the truth is that, like Suede, these are not the sounds of Cool Britannia, and it is a wicked thing to attempt to put them in a box with Northern fucking Uproar.

Do you remember Lime Lizard magazine?

Neither do I.

But I must have bought it at least once in 1993 because I have a tape that was given away free with the magazine.  The tape was called “The Sound of Mob Culture” and featured the likes of Gallon Drunk and Cornershop, alongside some lesser known, but equally peculiar indie acts.  The song which really grabbed me was “Supermodel Superficial” by Voodoo Queens - so when I read about their debut album “Chocolate Revenge” I was first in line to buy a copy…truthfully the line only contained me, but I feel a sense of enormous pride at the fact that I, quite honestly, was waiting outside my local record store before it opened in order to buy this, and that I wasn’t in the line to buy “Be Here Now” by Oasis a few years later.

That Lime Lizard tape also contained a track by Mambo Taxi who at one point featured Anjali Bhatia - who was the lead singer in Voodoo Queens.

Funny old world.

The album is full of riot grrrl attitude, but all delivered with delightfully silly, but sincere, songs like “You’re Dumped” and “I’m Not Bitter (I Just Want to Kill You)”.  In many ways they had much in common with S*M*A*S*H who made it onto Top of the Pops and the covers of the music weeklies more than once.  Funny that the three blokes making agit pop got that sort of attention while the group of Asian women were sort of ignored…

Looking like some sort of fake Ophelia drowning in a bathtub, PJ Harvey returned with her third album in 1995, “To Bring You My Love”.  A softer album than the two that had preceded it, but still an album full of raw emotion and honesty.  There are ruminations on love and relationships, but they are less aggressive than those on “Dry” or “Rid of Me”.  Here Harvey appears to be singing about the loss of, or longing for, a lover.  

There are things that are reminiscent of the Bad Seeds at their most melodic, and Harvey certainly shares qualities with Cave as a writer.  But the truth is that “To Bring You My Love” stands as evidence of Harvey’s astonishing talents, and her status as a unique artist.

1995 was dominated by big, but not all that interesting, albums from several B***pop bands.  There was the borefest that was “Morning Glory” from Oasis, an album that included more soporific “anthems” than any other in music history, from the hideous “Wonderwall” to the moribund “Don’t Look Back in Anger”.  Blur released an all surface, no feeling, collection of half-baked ideas in “The Great Escape” which sounds more like a collection of bonus tracks for “Parklife” than a complete album, despite one or two moments of real wonder.  

The sheer size of B***pop at this point meant that things that were really interesting and new just couldn’t get a foothold, couldn’t break through in ways that they deserved.  This is especially true of Tricky’s “Maxinquaye”, an album that enjoyed huge critical acclaim at the time, and that featured prominently in the annual “best of” lists, but that is rarely mentioned in the conversation around the period.  I love some of the B***pop albums from 1995, particularly Elastica’s debut, but none of them come close to what Tricky delivered.

Not one.

It is, like “Dummy”, a trip-hop album (I guess) but it couldn’t be more different in almost every way.  Tricky’s voice is unique, he is an absolute original of the species.  He is talking about a world that seems utterly alien to the chattering classes, but to anyone who has lived a life scarred by poverty, or trauma, the themes are universal.  Like PJ Harvey he is one of those rare beasts who transcends the confines of popular culture and can be described as a poet.

Leftfield released what can comfortably be described as one of the greatest house albums ever with “Leftism”.  Where The Prodigy blended elements of dance, electronica, punk, and more, to create the sound of the previous years “Music for the Jilted Generation” (an album that cemented their position as the dance act of choice for the main stage of festivals throughout the nineties), “Leftism” is a much purer dance record.  Featuring appearances from the likes of John Lydon of PiL and Toni Halliday from Curve, the album was a massive critical and commercial success.

Looking back to this point in time from my post-middle age viewpoint I cannot help but feel that I missed something important by being so embroiled in the B***pop thing at the time.  The world of dance music was offering something so much more creative and daring - and it didn’t require me to sacrifice seeing Echobelly in concert in order to also involve/indulge myself in the world of dance…I could have had both.

Alongside “Leftism” there were albums from Chemical Brothers, “Exit Planet Dust”, and Goldie, “Timeless”, that now provoke a similar feeling of having missed out on something revolutionary.

Ah well.

When I was 15 I bought a copy of an album from Sleeves in Kirkcaldy solely on the front cover.  I hadn’t heard the band, or even heard of the band. 

Best decision I ever made.

The album was “Love Not Money” and the band were Everything But The Girl.

That album with its obvious love for The Smiths, the shimmering guitars, the plaintive vocals, was the sound of my adolescent self.  I played that album constantly for months.  Opening track “When All’s Well” would be one of my Desert Island Discs - and would be a strong contender for the one song I would choose ahead of all others.  I can’t explain it, it just does something to me.  

By the time we reach 1996 Tracey and Ben have had a global hit with “Missing” from their 1994 album “Amplified Heart”.  The album blended their traditional songwriting sensibilities with hints of electronica and dance music…that influence led to the Todd Terry remix of “Missing” that gave them a hit…everywhere.  At the same time they wrote the lyrics for two songs on Massive Attack's second album, “Protection”.  That willingness to step into the new, to embrace strangers, resonates with me - I had straddled the worlds of electronic and indie for years, EBTG became my spirit animal.

“Walking Wounded” was a more explicitly electronic album and it gave them four more hit singles; Walking Wounded, Wrong, Single, and Before Today.  Last year's “Fused” was evidence that after almost 40 years as a creative endeavour they remain a force to be reckoned with, defiantly looking forwards while so many of their peers remain trapped in a moment they can’t get out of. 

Speaking of things that are more explicitly electronic, 1996 also saw Aphex Twin release the “Richard D. James Album”.  I don’t know what to say about Aphex Twin - it is obvious that in James we are dealing with a true original, I would contend a genius, and that he is one of those rare beasts in popular culture who has created a world entirely of his own.  There wasn’t anyone else quite like him when “Selected Ambient Works 85-92” dropped in 1992, and there isn’t anyone like him now.  Everything from the artwork, titles, visuals, videos, and the sounds, are so carefully chosen and constructed that they heap shame on those who show less care over their art…naming no names.

In certain dusty corners of the internet there are people who really don’t like me - my hot takes on B***pop gets under the skin of certain people you may know.  One of the things that most infuriates them is my stubborn, wilful, refusal to just play the game.  While some are busy building brands and gathering “followers” I decided to do something a bit different…present an honest, personal, accurate, account of that period in history.  This involved not turning a blind eye to accusations of coercive, controlling, manipulative, and abusive behaviour by certain sacred cows…I decided that no longer getting free tickets for gigs in tiny pubs was less important than standing by my principles.  But the thing that really grinds the gears of some is the fact that I will not back down from two positions; Shampoo are B***pop in ways that Oasis never were, and that “Spice” by the Spice Girls is the greatest B***pop album of them all.

Naughty.

I’ve already written at length about “Spice” but here is something from that longer piece that I think captures what I am saying…

Critics of Spice Girls will argue that they were puppets, a carefully constructed pop experiment  with shadowy figures in the background pulling the strings. That is, to be blunt, bullshit. Worse, it  is just another form of the misogyny that infects the music scene and industry. What those  people are really saying is that “These women couldn’t possibly be “real” people with their own  personalities and opinions, there must be a man involved somewhere.” Maybe there was…but  the Spice Girls were using the power and influence of those figures to push their own form of  radical feminism. They were just as radical as the likes of Huggy Bear, or Bikini Kill in the States,  and people like Kathleen Hanna would have seen them as kindred spirits…or maybe not, after all  “Girl Power” was Kathleen’s idea. There may be flaws in the Spice Girls brand of feminism, writer  Jenny Stevens in an article for Vice (How The Spice Girls Ripped Girl Power From It’s Radical  Roots) discussed the fact that “girl power” as presented by the Spice Girls presented the notion  that girls could have it all…but then flung them into a world where, in fact, they couldn’t. But, the  very existence of a group of women who looked like Spice Girls and who said and did the things  they did was some sort of victory, surely? 

https://tinyurl.com/ytxjr9nv

They followed this up with the equally glorious “Spiceworld” just a year later in 1997 - in a year when people tried to convince themselves that “Urban Hymns” by The Verve was anything other than the sonic equivalent of the effects of Tramadol, “Spiceworld” was a wonderful reminder of just how much fun pop music could, and should, be.  You can tell me until you are blue in the face that “Bittersweet Symphony” is a “banger”, but it doesn’t make me feel the way that “Spice Up Your Life Does”.

Another perfect slice of how great pop music can be came from Scotland’s Texas.  I remember receiving their debut album, “Southside” as a Christmas present in 1989, a hymn to the music that shaped the people in the band, particularly the soul and blues of America.  In singer Sharleen Spiteri they had a front woman who looked like she had been created in a laboratory - she was achingly cool, and was possessed of the sort of voice that could make the most mundane of songs soar.

Their fourth album, “White on Blonde”, was a huge success with more than four million copies sold globally.  It propelled them to the position of pop stars, and saw them cement their place as one of the best British bands of the decade.  It featured so many hits that it seemed unfair on other bands that it even existed.  Critics would spend most of the year trying to convince themselves that the prog-rock “OK Computer” from Radiohead was a work of genius, and not a snoozefest guaranteed to put an insomniac to sleep long before the end of the near seven minute long “Paranoid Android”…but a song like “Halo” could rouse a patient from a coma with all their faculties intact.

Oasis released “Be Here Now” but the high point of Noel Gallagher’s career came when he provided vocals for the best album of the year, The Chemical Brothers “Dig Your Own Hole”.  It is my suspicion that Gallagher would probably quite like to make a dance/electronic album, but he has boxed himself in by pandering to the demands of an audience who just want to hear the same song over and over again.  He may have chosen all the things you would expect him to when he appeared on Desert Island Discs, but he also chose “Voodoo Ray” by A Guy Called Gerald, and he has flirted with dance/electronic sounds…to a wave of disinterest from the boys in his audience who wear those funny Cornish pasty shoes.  

Oh well.