Wednesday, October 22, 2008

I truly relished the opportunity to collate a bunch of songs purely devoted to British pop. Yet, despite my enthusiasm for this era of music, I feel a bit awkward about concept of Britpop in that the term is traditionally associated with the chart battle between Roll With It and Country House. The term reminds me of this insidious presence of marketing departments in British record companies, purposefully orchestrating a "chart battle" in order to garner more popularity. It just seems so tacky, so unnecessary.

However, Britpop tends to encompass far more than destructive marketing ploys (and token Union Jack imagery).. and far be it from my responsibility to construct any sort of conclusion about what the genre does encompass exactly, I know that it just means so much more to me. These songs remind me of the aspects of myself that I have grown accustomed to: ambiguous bouts of sarcasm, neverending bouts of anxiety and a perverse compulsion to yearn for every other moment but this one. It sounds like a distinct kind of British misery, don't you think?


Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Britpop Podcast #3
Lush - Ladykillers
Sons and Daughters - Gilt Complex
Elastica - Car Song
The Smiths - Girl Afraid
The Popguns - Waiting for the Winter
Yeti - Last Time You Go
Oasis - Songbird
Inspiral Carpets - She Comes in the Fall (acapella)
Blur - Death of a Party (demo)

Download (24.06 MB)

3 comments:

China said...

Oh god, I miss Lush and Elastica. Thank you for this.

(Very much love the mod podcasts as well!)

Mike said...

Nice mix thanks for the upload. Aaaah Britpop, it was shortly after that Simon Cowell arrived on the scene and killed music for good.

Anonymous said...

Well-written blog! Interesting observations and fantastic podcasts. Thanks for your efforts.