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Britpop was a genre which emerged in the early ‘90s in the United Kingdom. It grew out of the British indie music scene and was characterized by its guitar-driven pop sound.
This list was compiled by aggregating the results of 22 sources. Those albums which made at least 3 lists were ranked by overall Dave’s Music Database points and then the top 25 were ranked based on the aggregate of Britpop albums.
6. Suede (aka “London Suede”) Suede (1993)
7. The Stone Roses The Stone Roses (1989)
8. Blur The Great Escape (1995)
9. Blur Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993)
10. Radiohead The Bends (1995)
Britpop was a genre which emerged in the early ‘90s in the United Kingdom. It grew out of the British indie music scene and was characterized by its guitar-driven pop sound.
This list was compiled by aggregating 29 lists (sources at the bottom of the page). Those songs which made 3 or more lists were then ranked based on their overall status in Dave’s Music Database.
Click here to see other genre-specific song lists.
11. Manic Street Preachers “A Design for Life” (1996)
12. The Verve “The Drugs Don’t Work” (1997)
13. Elastica “Connection” (1994)
14. Blur “Parklife” (1994)
15. Cornershop “Brimful of Asha” (1997)
16. Edwyn Collins “A Girl Like You” (1995)
17. Coldplay “Trouble” (2000)
18. Stone Roses “I Am the Resurrection” (1989)
19. Oasis “Supersonic” (1994)
20. Oasis “Whatever” (1994)
21. Manic Street Preachers “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next” (1998)
22. Oasis “D’You Know What I Mean?” (1997)
23. Oasis “Cigarettes and Alcohol” (1994)
24. Stone Roses “Love Spreads” (1994)
25. Blur “There’s No Other Way” (1991)
26. Supergrass “Alright” (1995)
27. The Verve “Lucky Man” (1997)
28. Oasis “Some Might Say” (1995)
29. Blur “Country House” (1995)
30. Radiohead “Just” (1995)
31. Blur “This Is a Low” (1995)
32. Blur “Beetlebum” (1997)
33. Suede “Animal Nitrate” (1993)
34. The Verve “Sonnet” (1998)
35. James “Laid” (1993)
36. Oasis “Roll with It” (1995)
37. Placebo “Nancy Boy” (1997)
38. Suede “The Drowners” (1992)
39. Lush “Ladykillers” (1996)
40. Ocean Colour Scene “The Riverboat Song” (1996)
41. The Verve “History” (1995)
42. Mansun “Wide Open Space” (1996)
43. Ocean Colour Scene “The Day We Caught the Train” (1996)
44. Blur “The Universal” (1995)
45. Oasis “Shakermaker” (1994)
46. Pulp “Babies” (1992)
47. The Lightning Seeds “The Life of Riley” (1992)
48. Space “Female of the Species” (1996)
49. The Bluetones “Slight Return” (1996)
50. Blur “Chemical World” (1993)
Q magazine is a British magazine that has been around since the mid-‘80s. While its U.S. counterparts seem dead-set on always putting a scantily clad babe on their covers or shoving in non-musical content that supposedly fits the same demographic, Q is all music. Over the years, they’ve put out a number of best-of-all-time album lists. I’ve aggregated 16 of them (see the links at the bottom of the page) for a ranking you won’t find in any of their magazines.
3 special editions in January (covering 1954-69), February (covering 1970-1979), and March 2004 (covering 1980-2004). Each featured a top 20 album list and a top 20 song list.
Featured lists of must-have albums (from 4 to 11 picks) and tracks (roughly 50) in multiple genres including rock, pop, punk, rap, country, blues, soul, metal, reggae, jazz, folk, electronic, and indie.
1995 marked the pinnacle of Britpop in the U.K. The genre emerged from the British independent music scene in the early ‘90s and has been suggested to be the English response to the rise of grunge in the U.S.A. The form was characterized by its guitar-driven pop sound which recalled some of the country’s biggest bands from the 1960s and 1970s such as The Beatles and The Kinks. Groups from the 1980s and early 1990s such as The Smiths, The Stone Roses, and Happy Mondays were considered immediate predecessors to the movement. In the U.S., the genre was understandably less prevalent but many of the bands labeled as Britpop found homes on American alternative radio.
The genre’s two most popular bands were Blur and Oasis. In 1995, the former group was coming off the success of their highly acclaimed album Parklife while the latter band was coming off Definitely Maybe, which had set the record for the country’s fastest-selling debut album.
Both groups were prepping their follow-up albums and had grown antagonistic toward each other in the last year. By the time they were ready to release their new singles, the record companies made the most of the marketing opportunity and released the singles (“Country House” for Blur, “Roll with It” for Oasis) on the same day.
The release date, August 14, was cited by NME magazine as the day of the big chart showdown – or “The Battle of Britpop” as it was commonly referred to by the press. However, it wasn’t until the official UK chart for the week ending August 26, 1995, that an official winner could be declared. Blur debuted at #1 on the chart with 274,000 copies while Oasis’ sales of 216,000 landed them at #2. However, while Blur won the battle, Oasis won the war. Their album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? became the third-best-selling album in British history and found much greater success in the U.S. than Blur.
For more important days in music history, check out the Dave’s Music Database history page.
In the summer after Parklife was released, Britpop reached a feverish peak with the Blur vs. Oasis battle. The only the thing the bands truly shared, “apart from their public loathing of each other, was their preoccupation with the sixties, with the former attempting to re-write the entire Beatles back catalogue while Blur revived the archetypical English whimsy and art school artifice of The Kinks.” PR
However, “Blur’s admiration of The Kinks isn’t as blatant as their rivals’ fixation for The Fab Four.” PR While previous album “Modern Life Is Rubbish established Blur as the heir to the archly British pop of the Kinks, the Small Faces, and the Jam” AMG, Parklife “revealed the depth of that transformation” AMG by serving up “more eccentricity and more focused evocations of everyday life than Oasis’s work.” TB “The ghost of Ray Davies can be heard on the character sketch Tracy Jacks and there are echoes of the similarly styled Small Faces in the title track,” PR a “mod anthem” AMG in which Phil Daniels, the star of Quadrophenia, “lends his broadest ‘sarf London’ accent.” PR
Parklife
However, the band doesn’t just utilize “Ray Davies’ seriocomic social commentary” AMG; “Parklife runs through the entire history of post-British Invasion Britpop in the course of 16 songs, touching on psychedelia, synth pop, disco, punk, and music hall along the way.” AMG “From the fairground-style dembellishments and novelty instrumentation to the flirtations with punk and psych-pop, Parklife constantly surprises with its diversity of material and infectious good humour.” PR “Damon Albarn even manages a fair stab at Syd Barrett on Far Out.” PR
Indeed, Albarn “intended these songs to form a sketch of British life in the mid-‘90s, and it’s startling how close he came to his goal; not only did the bouncy, disco-fied Girls & Boys and singalong chant Parklife become anthems in the U.K., but they inaugurated a new era of Britpop and lad culture, where British youth celebrated their country and traditions.” AMG However, it was still “a thoroughly modern record in that it bends genres and is self-referential.” AMG “And, by tying the past and the present together, Blur articulated the mid-‘90s zeitgeist and produced an epoch-defining record.” AMG
Airplay/Streaming (in millions):
-- radio, 49.8 video, 168.91 streaming
Awards:
Click on award for more details.
About the Song:
The rock band Blur formed in London in 1988 with singer Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James, and drummer Dave Rowntree. Their debut album, 1991’s Leisure connected to the Madchester and shoegazing scenes of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s while their second album, 1993’s Modern Life Is Rubbish, showcased them more as a guitar pop group. With their third album, 1994’s Parklife, Blur established themselves as one of the pillars of the Britpop movement of the 1990s.
It became their best-selling album in the UK with more than a million sold. It was their first of seven consecutive albums to top the UK charts. The album produced four top-20 singles in the UK, with the lead single, “Girls and Boys,” being the most successful. Blur didn’t generate as much of an audience in the United States, although this song was one of a handful to reach the alternative rock chart, becoming their biggest hit.
Damon Albarn was inspired to write the song while on vacation in Spain where he saw what he called “a rampant sexual scene among visitors.” WK Songfacts.com called it “a send-up of the hedonistic club culture of the ‘90s” SF which “deals with sexual roles, and freedom of sexual preference.” SF Radiohead’s Thom Yorke said it is one of the songs he wished he’d written. SF
Graham Coxon said audiences responded to “Girls and Boys” because “there’s nothing too complicated about it and it’s got a chanty sort of chorus.” SF Alex James described itas “disco drums, nasty gutiars and Duran Duran bass.” WKBillboard’s Larry Flick said it was “a detour into clubland with an amusing, word-twisting ditty fleshed out with a trance-like synth energy and a hard, syncopated beat, courtesy of the Pet Shop Boys.” WKVibe’s James Hunter called it “a brilliant turn on new wave disco that boasts the year’s best bent guitars.” WK
British music magazines NME and Melody Maker both named “Girls and Boys” the single of the year. It was nominated for best song at the MTV Europe Music Awards. AllMusic.com’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine said the song was “undeniably catchy” and “one of the best Blur ever recorded.” WK
