I watched (on TV) The 1975 headlining Glastonbury on Friday night. I thought they did a pretty good job, but also it gave me the slightly melancholy thought - is this the last British guitar band that will headline Glastonbury for the first time?
The 1975 are a big, notorious band and they've been around a while. They've had five UK Number 1 albums, an actual Number 1 album in the USA, 25 songs with 100 million+ Spotify streams [my new personality is middle aged man obsessed with streaming numbers), yet still, they were only just big enough for that stage.
You wouldn't say that any of their songs are really and truly embedded in the national consciousness. They haven't had any proper big big hit singles. No guitar bands have, for years.
What are the biggest (both real and potential) current British bands (which haven't already headlined) ... Wolf Alice, Wet Leg, The Last Dinner Party, maybe? Fontaines DC if you're counting Irish ... Idles? Blossoms? Don't think any of those are close, really (Wet Leg most likely to prove me wrong) - Headlining Latitude, maybe, but not Glastonbury ...
Someone older who hasn't done it yet ... Keane? Franz Ferdinand? Elbow? Wouldn't have thought so. Those bands are getting smaller, not bigger. Suede? They might actually be able to pull it off, but very unlikely to be chosen.
Someone not yet known? Possible. Things change and come round again, but it really has been a long time since any bands really blew up, like Oasis, like Coldplay, like the Arctic Monkeys, and there's no reason, based on how music and society is now, for that to change.
Through their career and on Friday night, a lot of people have found Matty Healy and The 1975 irritating. I can see why, indeed that has included me, but I've come to quite admire his schtick and quite like their music. Quite in the English, not American, sense. All quite quite. They've got, for me, one all-timer of a song (Love It If We Made It), which they didn't quite nail on Friday night, and quite a lot of pretty catchy, derivative, good tunes, with quite funny, occasionally slightly scabrous lyrics. He is well served in being bearable in his knowing dissolute rock star performance by being in a group of friends, rather than a solo artist. He is like a more bearable Robbie Williams, more bearable perhaps because he leans harder into being irritating and doesn't demand the love in return to quite the same extent.
Anyway, watching them on Friday night made me think quite a lot about big rock shows, how to carry it off and how not to carry it off. I'd give The 1975 a 7/10, and maybe their new album (from which they, quite safely, played nothing) will contain a couple more all-timers which will lift them to an 8/10 if they headline Glastonbury again.
I'd maybe be more effusive about them had I not watched The Maccabees on Sunday night, a band of a similar (slightly earlier) vintage who never got quite so big, split up and have now reformed. The Maccabees headlined a smaller stage, the Park Stage, and it was, from my sofa, a 10/10.
I rather love the Maccabees, as I've said before, and this triumphant gig only emphasized, for me, that they're the one that, so far, got away, a band that, with different timings and a fair wind, might have been properly huge - not Coldplay-huge maybe, but bigger than Elbow-huge. This wasn't a truly big gig, though, just the Park Stage - a far easier win. Their big gig comes at All Points East in August, when they headline their own show. Would love it if they made it.
Amongst many things I liked about the Maccabees is how close (and democratically) they stood. Their three main members stand level with each other across the front (bassist to the side). They are much more of a guitar band than The 1975. Usually three, sometimes four, guitars coming right at you. Lots of all singing together, a barrage of harmonious noise.
Right, I must say, at this point, my intention was to analyse, in detail, from my experience, the different things that make a headline set work or not work, but it strikes me that would be a) unsatisfactory and b) lead nowhere.
Let me simply say the best big shows I've been to have been Blur, and the worst have been The Strokes (both bands I've seen three times). The most mundane and going through the motions was Oasis. The most brilliant because I caught them right at their peak (though one wouldn't have known they were peaking) were Franz Ferdinand and Ash.
Anyway, going back to my original point, my elegy for the big British guitar band, I decided to put together a playlist.
Now, I started making compilation tapes in the mid-90s, and making countless compilation tapes and latterly playlists taught me to always do your best to be eclectic. I might, at times, only listen to one type of music, but you wouldn't entirely know it from the tapes I made.
But this list will be given over, in the most part, the one dimension - the white guys with guitars.
It will be the (a) tale of British guitar bands from 2000 to 2025 - always bands, never solo artists. It will not be cool, but I think it will be an enjoyable listen. All the songs will be songs I enjoy and, when it comes to British indie rock, my taste tends to the straightforward and anthemic. But I won't include Kasabian. Or Scouting for Girls. We start at, or near, the beginning.
- Yellow - Coldplay Well, British "indie" "rock" music of the 2000s unquestionably starts here, with this undeniable song, which Coldplay never really sounded like again. Still my favourite Coldplay song, maybe their only one I like unambiguously, and still their most popular.
- The Cedar Room - Doves I loved Doves a lot at the start of this century, felt this was the direction guitar music would go in, but it never really happened.
- American Trilogy - The Delgados. Not surprising that there are so many Scottish acts in the first couple of years, that being, very much, where I was at.
- Actually it's Darkness - Idlewild
- I Need Direction - Teenage Fanclub. A large part of music in the 2000s, for me, was albums by older bands that were still good - also true that nearly all the 90s bands I've chosen here were, though around at the time of Britpop, not usually called Britpop.
- Winterlight - Clearlake. Man, the epic, cinematic indie of the early 2000s, that's really something ...
- Always: Your Way - My Vitriol
- To You - I am Kloot From the short-lived "new acoustic movement"
- Flowers in the Window - Travis. Co-written, apparently, by a little fella in a great little blues band, Mr Paul McCartney. And you can hear it. Travis were the biggest British guitar band at the start of the century, which is strange ...
- Don't Just Do Something - Spiritualized. Not Ladies and Gentlemen ..., but I've always found this languorous epic from the mainly disappointing follow-up incredibly moving and also extremely good advice. Only recently realised that he almost certainly substituted "cigarettes" in for "heroin" in the lyrics, at the last moment.
- Julie Christie - Spearmint. I listened to this none-more-indie album again recently. Scottish Pop, this, The Flaming Lips, Stealing Beauty. Absolutely lush and full of pop culture references.
- Time for Heroes - The Libertines. Though The Libertines are my age contemporaries, I also felt they were a generation, musically, below my first love (Blur, SFA etc) so, thankfully, was always a bit removed. They're not good, really, but there were good songs on that first album.
- Envy - Ash. Actually, the start of Ash's down slope, because this was a standalone single but not a massive hit, and obviously Shining Light and Burn Baby Burn are the sensible choices, but I always rather loved Envy.
- Slow Life - SFA
- Darts of Pleasure - Franz Ferdinand. When I saw Franz Ferdinand for the first time, headlining Benicassim (I saw them a couple of years later headlining Latitude), what struck me was gleeful choreography and the menacing joie de vivre of the non-Kapranos members. They just had so much personality, and I think it got too Kapranos-focused, really, and something was lost.
- Lose Yr Frown - Electric Soft Parade
- Friday Night - The Darkness
- The Final Arrears - Mull Historical Society
- Time is Running Out - Muse. Don't really like Muse, but felt I should include the bands that have headlined Glastonbury (which they've done a baffling three times) ... couldn't face including Oasis, Kasabian or The Who, though (yes, The Who have headlined Glastonbury and released new music this century ...)
- Run - Snow Patrol
- Forned a Band - Art Brut. A break from the morose and overblown.
- Four to the Floor - Starsailor. Were supposed to be massive, but their hammy balladeering was maybe a step too far, but with this song they happened to do a song people could dance to, so it had a bit of a life of its own.
- To You Alone - The Beta Band. Lovely standalone single from that weirdly magical band.
- Somewhere Only We Know -
Keane
- I'm a Cuckoo - Belle and Sebastian. If ever this band was going to get properly big ...
- Long Time Coming - Delays
- Vice - Razorlight. Actual decent first album.
- Our Mutual Friend - The Divine Comedy
- Heliopolis by Night - Aberfeldy
- Dakota - Stereophonics
- All Night Disco Party - Brakes. As I've said before, I saw Brakes about five times at small festivals in the late 2000s, and they were the most fun little festival band I ever saw.
- In the Morning - The Coral
- Wires - Athlete. Finished a few seconds ahead of the lead singer at the Ashford Parkrun a few weeks ago. Huh, some "athlete", McGaughey quipped ...
- Banquet - Bloc Party
- Godhopping - Dogs Die in Hot Cars. Hmm, do we think we should maybe have called ourselves something else, members of little remembered but highly catchy Fife indie band Dogs Die in Hot Cars sometimes say to each other ...
- I Predict a Riot - Kaiser Chiefs. In the 2000s, millions of people going mental to this and Mr Brightside. Mental. That's just how it was.
- Ashes - Embrace. Embrace at Barrowlands was the first gig I ever understood the power of live music - big guitars, singalongs, throwing beer, the heady fun of it. So I don't care, still got a soft spot for the most-maligned of the much-maligned ...
- The Coast is Always Changing - Maximo Park Maximo Park and the Futureheads are absolute peak "new rock revolution" era, weird little bands having proper hits. Saw them both on successive days at Benicassim and, let me say. those were good times.
- Hounds of Love - Futureheads
- Forever Lost - Magic Numbers
- Sewn - The Feeling At the time, the press tried to make that The Feeling were doing something unusual, that their influences were different from other bands ... i mean, that's pretty hard to make out.
- Trains to Brazil - Guillemots
- Burning Benches - Morning Runner.
- My Brittle Heart - Lucky Soul. Aah, this was a nice album.
- Suzie - Boy Kill Boy. A catchy song.
- Reckoner - Radiohead. Pure landfill indie this. Just another bunch of chancers cashing in on on the fad.
- She's Got You High - Mumm-Ra. The ultimate.
- Giddy Stratospheres - Long Blondes. "A woman?" said Bond archly. Yes, I have noticed that up to this point it has all been men, and that is truly shocking, yes, and does explain a lot about why people were sick of the boys in the band. The tables do gradually turn after this. Anyway, Long Blondes - great.
- People Help the People - Cherry Ghost. Name comes from Wilco. Doesn't sound like Wilco, but a nice song.
- Ice Cream - New Young Pony Club. Hardly qualifies, as not really guitar music. but this band was supercool for a very short while.
- Robot Man - The Aliens. "A funny wee man with a funny wee beard"
- Now Til 69 - The Shortwave Set
- Starlings - Elbow. Quite a good Elbow song as they go.
- Precious Plans - Field Music. I remember, on iTunes, seeing that I'd listened to this album all the way through over 10 times, but, although I enjoyed it, could hardly remember any of it. Just a band I tried to like a lot, but, in the end, only liked a bit.
- I'm a Realist - Cribs
- Waving Flags - Sea Power. Makes me quite emotional, this song. "Well, welcome in from across the Vistula, you've come so very far, all waving flags". Just what a terrible country we became after this.
- Head Rolls Off - Frightened Rabbit. Apple's just sent me a 100-song playlist of my most listened to tracks of the 10 years of Apple Music, and, notwithstanding the Let it Gos and Hakuna Matatas I couldn't control, there are actually very few songs from this list on it. It's mainly the Americana. But this is there. Tiny changes.
- Paris - Friendly Fires. That British version of indie-dance from around 2010, a lot of it I can't be doing with (Alt-J, just never for me) but this song I do love.
- Two Doors Down - Mystery Jets
- NW5 - Madness. Aah, you know, Madness.
- Don't Upset the Rhythm - The Noisettes
- The Sweetest Thing - Camera Obscura
- Place for Us - The Mummers. This is, although a little sickly, a quite lovely song, maybe a bit of a steal from Us by Regina Spektor.
- Mountains - Biffy Clyro. Bichardy ric, they might have been called.
- Dog Days are Over - Florence and the Machine
- A Matter of Time - The Leisure Society
- How You Like Me Now - The Heavy
- Daddy's Gone - Glasvegas. Dunno about including this one, really. Got talked up a lot, Glasvegas, but not great, really.
- Something Good Can Work - Two Door Cinema Club
- Willows of Carbeth - Trembling Bells
- Little Lion Man - Mumford and Sons. So, notwithstanding the personal sympathy I have for the pleasant and right-on lead singer that his decision to put his name to the band now means everyone thinks he's a horrible racist, whereas in fact he diplomatically kicked the horrible racist out of the band and spends his days drumming for Joni Mitchell and doing right-on things, this band headlined Glastonbury and I certainly don't dislike their music enough not to include it.
- Spanish Sahara - Foals. In, I think, 2011, I was at Latitude and I'd just come from some fairly middle-of-the-road headliner and stood on the edge of the second-stage tent, absolutely packed with kids and going nuts to Foals, specifically this song. And I'd have sworn that was the future, and Foals would be huge. But, no, they weren't.
- Zorbing - Stornoway. Aaaaaah.
- Tonight's the Kind of Night - Noah and the Whale. Writes for musicals, now, this guy.
- Wet Suit - The Vaccines. You may have noticed the list is very top-heavy, chronologically. This is not halfway through, and we've only got about 25 songs left. Again. I guess that is very much the point.
- Snap Out of It - Arctic Monkeys
- Under the Westway - Blur. Blur released three very good albums this century and I could have had something from any of them, but, you know, Albarn losing it while singing this non-album single at Wembley in 2023 was really my most unforgettable Blur moment. Coxon's face doing the Lineker "someone have a word with him". And, going back to the start, seeing that it means a lot to the band can be a big part of what makes a headline show memorable.
- The Mother We Share - Chvrches
- What You Wanted - Spector Kind of, the last cry of a certain scene.
- Duet - Everything
Everything
- Show Me the Wonder - Manic Street Preachers. The Manics have released 10 albums this century. 10! Workrate. Nearly all of them went Top 2 as well.
- Pompeii - Bastille. You know, it's funny, I've been talking about the death in popularity of the indie band, but if you look at the upper reaches most streamed songs in the world ever, it is full of polite, sensitive Brits with guitars - Sheeran, Coldplay, Tom Odell, Passenger, Keane, and Bastille, who are, strictly, an indie band, and released this insanely successful song.
- Default - Django Django
- Something Like Happiness - The Maccabees. Aah, the Maccabees. My pet theory is that the Maccabees split up first time because they had this song which they thought would be sung back to them by 100,000 people, which would cross over every potential barrier ... and ... nothing. I bloody love Something Like Happiness.
- Don't Delete the Kisses - Wolf Alice
- Love It If We Made It - The I975. I guess we won't.
- Danny Nedelko - Idles
- Here's the Thing - Sports Team
- Heat Waves - Glass Animals. This is a British indie band, right, and this song has three and a half billion stream on Spotify! That's, i guess, 300,000 times more than Something Like Happiness by the Maccabees. What the hex.
- The Place Where He Inserted the Blade - Black Country New
Road. Very nice.
- Sunday - Let's Eat Grandma
- Chaise Longue - Wet Leg. Not even this was an actual chart hit single.
- She Still Leads Me On - Suede
- Sweet Sounds of Heaven - The Rolling Stones. British guitar band, headlined Glastonbury this century. They qualify.
- Back to the Radio - Porridge Radio
- The World's Biggest Paving Slab - English Teacher
- We Make Hits - Yard Act. Ha, they don't actually.
- Nothing Matters - The Last Dinner Party
- All Now - The Staves
- Alone - The Cure British guitar band, headlined Glastonbury this century. They definitely qualify.
So there we go, that's 100. I could have gone deeper on the landfill, some of which is memorable and catchy - no Wombats, Pigeon Detectives, The View, The Fratellis, The Others, Hard-Fi, no The Automatic, no Dirty Pretty Things,, no Hoosiers, no Courteeners or Reverend and the Makers ... there was a lot, wasn't there, and they all had bona fide hits.
I will say that it does seem to me sad that there isn't a path for hopeless boys to get together and practise and learn to play together and harmonise, write songs, to make something beautiful and make a success of it. This is the night Oasis are playing together for the first time in 16 years, and Oasis maybe embodied and sullied that image, but they don't have to be Oasis, they can be The Coral, The Jam, The Manic Street Preachers, Arctic Monkeys or The Beatles. That would be good.
