B77: Anthems for Doomed Youth

Sorry, a return to well-worn territory – just thinking of those good old rock anthems of the 90s again.

There were a lot of anthemic hit singles in those days. It is interesting to look at the ones which were of the time, the ones that were about something, and the ones which were not of the time, and were about nothing.

None of these things are necessarily better than the others.

I’ve been going through a list of Top 10 singles between 1993 and 1999 – it’s frightening, I know, or can certainly recall snatches of, all of them, even the most forgettable cheesy house tracks. Memory blasts of loved, tolerated and loathed songs.

A lot of the guitar songs that crossed over into the charts were anthemic. That makes sense.

I’d still contend that the first real Britpop hit was ‘Wake Up Boo’ (neither, essentially, about anything nor particularly of the time) in March 1995. Blur, Suede and Oasis had had Top 10 hits before that, of course, but the Boo Radleys were the first of the scene (if there was a scene) who wouldn’t get near the charts in ordinary times. I think that’ll have been the one that persuaded the bands and the record companies that chart domination could be theirs.

Then, for about 3 years, there were a lot of “Britpop” Top 10 hits, though they hardly filled up the charts to the exclusion of all else. There was still plenty of space for pop, dance, hip-hop, r’n’b, easy listening and whatever.

Indeed, it’s definitely cheesy dance hits which are the defining chart sound of the decade.

Occasionally, big dance and pop hits crossed over with the kind of of-the-time anthems some of the Britpop bands were going for. So, I’d suggest, the likes of Things Can Only Get Better, Never Forget by Take That, Born Slippy and even Wannabe are held to be part of “Britpop” as a wider cultural movement.

There were a lot of Number 2 hits – many of the most memorable songs stalled at Number 2, from Wonderwall to Song 2, Bittersweet Symphony to Alright.

There is a reasonable shortage of big pre-millennial anxious and apocalyptic hits. Say what you like about Jamiroquai, but Too Young to Die and Virtual Insanity now sound a lot more tuned in than a lot of the rest. Blur managed End of a Century and The Universal, Radiohead had Paranoid Android, Robbie Williams cottoned on to it with Millennium (vacuous now as it ever was).

Then there’s Three Lions, of course, which is the biggest, and most anthemic, of all them, and in its wake a fair few other football songs.

Tubthumping by Chumbawamba sounds a bit like a football song, a non-political blast from a political band. It has become a cultural touchstone more than most else of the time.

Then there’s Oasis, who dealt exclusively in anthems, albeit wilfully unobservant ones. The clarity of their myopic vision (I know) felt perfectly fine for a time. Then very rapidly sounded dreadful.

It’s a little interesting (to me at least) that the output of Weller (one of the biggest influences and also a massive active part of the era) at the time is wholly apolitical, considering the political songs he made his name with were my entire inspiration for being into that music in the first place.

I think at the time I was a little disappointed with Weller, wanted music to sound like The Jam and coudn't understand why the man who founded The Jam wasn't doing the job, but have come to enjoy the more pastoral, personal feel of his first three albums more in retrospect.

Blur, in general, were not really able to be anthemic class warriors, and were accused of sneering (like that matters), but, though I didn’t like those songs at the time, I think the likes of Charmless Man and Country House stand up quite well.

I’m probably in a minority of one, but in terms of “meeting someone who’s a bit of a dick” songs go, I prefer Charmless Man to Common People.

Charmless Man doesn’t exceed its brief.

Suede’s songs were kind of political. Trash and Beautiful Ones were naked anthems which worked tolerably well.

A lot of the minor Britpop bands made attempts to write songs that were vaguely “about” something with degrees of success – Ladykillers by Lush, King of the Kerb by Echobelly, Neighbourhood by Space, Nancy Boy by Placebo, Punka by Kenickie.

Gene, a band I like a lot, got in early on Blair disillusion with As Good As It Gets, and Edwyn Collins’ follow-up to A Girl Like You was a pleasingly cynical anti-scene flop called Keep on Burning.

The best, for me, are of course, the Welsh bands. The Man Don’t Give a Fuck is probably the Furries’ biggest song, and as solidly joyful an anti-establishment/millennial malaise anthem as you’ll find.

And then there’s the Manics, whose three biggest hits are all political songs (If you Tolerate This, Masses Against the Classes, A Design for Life), which is pretty good going. A Design for Life, Yes by McAlmont and Butler, and Brimful of Asha are my favourite hit songs of the era, still. Different kinds of big songs about varying degrees of something and nothing.

Anyway, as usual, I haven’t been able to find the wider point I thought I had, except to reflect that yes, one can see why people (annoyingly) see Britpop as some writ large cultural movement rather than a coincidence of good bands, since there are a lot of big songs which do seem, whether by design or accident, tied up with the people and the times.