Britpop

725. ‘Country House’, by Blur

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

When old fogies stop to reminisce about the 1990s, about the music that soundtracked final few years of the 20th Century, we might think of the Spice Girls, Take That, or Pulp. Maybe even The Prodigy, or The Chemical Brothers. But if you had to bet on it, you’d bet that we think of this one moment: the chart dated 20th-26th August 1995.

Country House, by Blur (their 1st of two #1s)

2 weeks, from 20th August – 3rd September 1995

Oasis Vs Blur. North Vs South. Working-class Mancs vs posh(er) Essex lads. Cliches, cliches, all the way. Legend has it that Liam Gallagher taunted Damon Albarn about Oasis having a number one single, spurring Blur’s management to cheekily change their next release date to clash with Oasis’s ‘Roll With It’, making for great publicity, and the highest sales week for a decade (setting the way for single sales to hit an all-time high in the coming years).

But the story here is the song, primarily, and I should block out all the hype and noise and focus on the tune. As with ‘Some Might Say’, ‘Country House’ may have been Blur’s first #1, but it’s not one of their very best singles. From their earlier hits, ‘Girls & Boys’ is better musically, while ‘Parklife’ has left a much larger cultural legacy. Still, it’s a fun, multi-coloured romp, right from the helter skelter intro through to the brass section in the fade-out. And it tells a story not much heard in chart-topping singles: that of a country squire living a life of rural asceticism. He’s got a fog in chest, So he needs a lot of rest… He doesn’t drink, smoke, laugh, Takes herbal baths… In the country…

There’s a lot going on, musically, and a lot of knowing references to British bands past. Oasis get a lot of stick for being musical magpies, but I hear plenty of Kinks and Small Faces, as well as Madness, and the ghosts of British music hall, here. (Chas & Dave, too, according to Noel Gallagher, but he meant it as an insult…) The video also has Brit-references galore: Page 3 girls, Benny Hill themed hi-jinks, a nod to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, Matt Lucas, Jo Guest and Keith Allen (featuring in his second chart-topping video). And for the ultimate Britpop seal of approval, it was directed by Damien Hirst.

The story, like I said, should be the song. And yet, would ‘Country House’ have made #1 were it not for all the hullaballoo? Maybe, as it was the lead single off a hotly-anticipated new album. But maybe not, as Blur had only three previous Top 10 hits to their name, and just one Top 5. So perhaps we can’t fully separate this song from all the nonsense. What’s certain is that the right song won. ‘Roll With It’ is probably Oasis’s laziest single. I do like it, but you can see why it’s been called ‘Status-Slade’ (though that’s not the insult some might think…) Also, in terms of the ‘Battle of Britpop’, Blur were the originals – their 1992 hit ‘Popscene’ is claimed by many as the very first Britpop single.

In my post on ‘Some Might Say’, I mentioned that my love for Oasis has dimmed over the years. With Blur, the opposite has happened. Nobody I knew at school would have admitted to liking them over Oasis – they were too clever, too arty… Everyone liked ‘Song 2’, but then that’s their dumbest song by far. As a sensible adult, though, I can admit that Blur were the more expansive songwriters. More fun, too – just look at them in the video, pratting about in bubble-baths, then try to imagine Liam doing the same…

Still, this is the first of only two times that we I’ll be writing about Blur (Albarn does also have a Gorillaz #1 to his name). Oasis may have lost this chart battle, but they definitely won the war…

720. ‘Some Might Say’, by Oasis

/ UK #1s blog / 26 Comments

I’m both thrilled and downhearted that we’ve reached the beginning of the Oasis era. Much like I wrote in the intro to my last post, on Take That’s ‘Back for Good’… What can I add to the three decades’ worth of column inches dedicated to Britain’s most polarising band.

Some Might Say, by Oasis (their 1st of eight #1s)

1 week, from 30th April – 7th May 1995

Basically, what to say about Oasis that isn’t cliched? I need to approach this completely subjectively, then. Which isn’t hard, because Oasis were my first big musical love (OK, second… but we’ll deal with that Spice Girls-shaped elephant in the room when the time comes…) ‘Some Might Say’ has never been among my very favourite Oasis records but, actually, this is a good thing, as far as this post is concerned. It hasn’t been overplayed to death, and I’m glad that this made #1, and not the two #2 hits that followed.

On the other hand, I’d rather their two preceding singles – ‘Whatever’, or ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’, had been the first chart-topper. ‘Some Might Say’ has some of the vim, the punkish energy of ‘Definitely Maybe’ – I’d say it’s the song from ‘What’s the Story…’ that could most easily slip onto their debut – but signs of bloat are already appearing. After a brilliant glam riff opening, it settles into a slightly plodding, overlong rock song (why, oh why, is this five and a half minutes long?) And, despite the long-held belief that Oasis were a rejection of grunge’s misery and introspection, there are some very heavy, grungy chords in the chorus.

I had a pop at Gary Barlow’s lyrics in that last post, and I have to call Noel out here too, even if this is where I tip into well-trodden cliché. Oasis lyrics walk the line between revelatory and ridiculous. One minute you’re thinking ‘Yes, profound!’. The next you’re thinking ‘Maybe not…’ Some might say they don’t believe in heaven, Go and tell it to the man who lives in hell… is a great line. Some might say you get what you’ve been given, If you don’t get yours I won’t get mine as well… is more at the ‘maybe not’ end. (Though we can all agree that The sink is full of fishes, She’s got dirty dishes on the brain… is a lyric for the ages…)

The star here, as in many of Oasis’s early songs, is the man interpreting these words, and making them his own. Liam. The last true rock star, and one of the all-time great frontmen. A beautiful moron (‘Some Might Say’ doesn’t have a proper video because he never showed up for the shoot), his sweetly aggressive vocals attack his brother’s unwieldy lines and transform them. Just try singing this song like he does. It’s very difficult – your voice ends up straining, and cracking, and getting lost among the walls of guitar (Oasis were, thankfully, never fans of understated production.)

Like I said, I once loved Oasis – growing up male, in small town Scotland, in the late ‘90s/early ‘00s, it was all but mandatory – but it is a love that has faded. I’ve accepted that they were limited, that they did have a habit of ‘borrowing’ riffs and melodies (even now I’ll listen to a Kinks album track and hear a bit that sounds familiar…), and that they believed their own hype a little too much. And yet, they were never as bad, as unoriginal, as much a Bargain Bucket Beatles, as some critics were desperate to make out.

Anyway, I’m writing as if this was their one and only chart-topper, not as if they have seven more to come. It’s easy to forget just how phenomenally successful they were. All seven of their studio albums entered the charts at #1, while ‘Some Might Say’ was the first of eight singles in a row to make either #1 or #2, between 1995 and 2000. It might not be the perfect song to be crowned their first chart-topper – the first chart-topper of the Britpop era even – but Some might say, We will find a brighter day… is perhaps the perfect summation of the Oasis manifesto.

669. ‘Dizzy’, by Vic Reeves & The Wonder Stuff

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

One glance at our next number one, and there’s an involuntary shiver. A comedian, a cover of a well-loved classic… It’s not that long since Hale and Pace were bothering the charts with their charidee dance-a-thon ‘The Stonk’. Is this the latest assault on the charts in the name of a ‘good cause’…?

Dizzy, by Vic Reeves & The Wonder Stuff (their 1st and only #1s)

2 weeks, from 3rd – 17th November 1991

Thankfully, no. It wasn’t for charity – more of cash-in of Vic Reeves being the hot young thing of British comedy – and, more importantly, it’s actually quite good! It’s a faithful cover of Tommy Roe’s 1969 original: slightly more frenetic, glossier in that early nineties sort of way, with a baggy Madchester beat. You can just about picture Bez shaking his maracas along to it.

Like ‘The Fly’ right before it, this feels very ‘90s’. In fact, could we claim that this is the very first Britpop #1? The Wonder Stuff were an indie band (well, technically they were ‘grebo’) who had been scoring lower-level Top 40 hits since the late 1980s, and had recently made the Top 5 for the first time. And yes, ok, Britpop isn’t officially supposed to start until Suede burst on to the scene a few months after this, but I’m claiming this as a sneak-preview of what’s to come in the middle of the decade. Plus, it’s a sixties throwback, and we know how indebted to that decade Britpop was.

Either way, it’s clear that the past two chart-toppers have been pure palate cleansers, trying to wash away the aftertaste of Bryan Adam’s ‘(Everything I Do)…’, which had been left lying out at number one so long it had started to rot. You always get the #1 that kickstarts a decade starts properly. With the sixties we had to wait until Gerry & The Pacemakers in 1963, while T Rex kicked the seventies off in style with ‘Hot Love’ in early ’71. The eighties were a more complex beast, because in some ways they started with Blondie, Gary Numan and The Boomtown Rats in 1978-9. Or, if your definition of the eighties involves more face-paint, then we had to wait until Adam & The Ants in 1981.

Still, I feel confident in proclaiming that the nineties start (around about) here. Not least because Vic Reeves would become one of the most popular television stars of the decade: ‘Shooting Stars’, ‘Big Night Out’, and ‘The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer’ were all big comedy shows: surreal, anarchic, all capturing the spirit of the time. (His partner for much of this, Bob Mortimer, features as a backing vocalist in the video to ‘Dizzy’.)

Helping this cover even further, as well as a competent indie band and a clever choice of song, is the fact that Reeves can carry a tune. Pre-fame he had played in several bands as a bassist/singer – he was born Jim Moir, and his stage-name is an amalgam of his two favourite singers, and two predecessors at the top of the charts, Vic Damone and Jim Reeves. One of the best things about this song is the fact that his northern accent – he grew up in Darlington – unashamedly shines through.

Up next, for all my talk of it officially being ‘the nineties’, is a gigantic comeback single for a megastar of the 80s. And the 70s. In fact, his very first release was at the end of the sixties…