page_title: Britpop
section_title: Peak and decline
hierarchical_section_title: Britpop / Peak and decline
context_page_description: Britpop was a mid-1990s UK-based music and culture movement that emphasised Britishness. It produced brighter, catchier alternative rock, partly in reaction to the popularity of the darker lyrical themes of the US-led grunge music and to the UK's own shoegazing music scene. The movement brought British alternative rock into the mainstream and formed the backbone of a larger British popular cultural movement, Cool Britannia, which evoked the Swinging Sixties and the British guitar pop of that decade.
  Britpop was a media-driven focus on bands which emerged from the independent music scene of the early 1990s. Although the term was viewed as a marketing tool, and more of a cultural moment than a musical style or genre, its associated bands typically drew from the British pop music of the 1960s, glam rock and punk rock of the 1970s and indie pop of the 1980s.
  The most successful bands linked with Britpop were Blur, Oasis, Suede and Pulp, known as the movement's "big four", although Suede and Pulp distanced themselves from the term. The timespan of Britpop is generally considered to be 1993–1997, and its peak years to be 1994–1995.
context_section_description: In the months following the chart battle, NME states, “Britpop became a major cultural phenomenon.” Oasis's second album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, sold over four million copies in the UK – becoming the fifth best-selling album in UK chart history. Blur's third album in their 'Life' trilogy, The Great Escape, sold over one million copies. At the 1996 Brit Awards, both albums were nominated for Best British Album (as was Pulp's Different Class), with Oasis winning the award. All three bands were also nominated for Best British Group and Best Video, which were won by Oasis. While accepting Best Video (for "Wonderwall"), Oasis taunted Blur by singing the chorus of the latter's "Parklife" and changing the lyrics to "shite life".
  Oasis' third album Be Here Now (1997) was highly anticipated. Despite initially attracting positive reviews and selling strongly, the record was soon subjected to strong criticism from music critics, record-buyers and even Noel Gallagher himself for its overproduced and bloated sound. Music critic Jon Savage pinpointed Be Here Now as the moment where Britpop ended; Savage said that while the album "isn't the great disaster that everybody says," he noted that "[i]t was supposed to be the big, big triumphal record" of the period. At the same time, Blur sought to distance themselves from Britpop with their self-titled fifth album, assimilating American lo-fi influences such as Pavement. Albarn explained to the NME in January 1997 that "We created a movement: as far as the lineage of British bands goes, there'll always be a place for us ... We genuinely started to see that world in a slightly different way."
  As Britpop slowed, many acts began to falter and broke up. The sudden popularity of the pop group the Spice Girls has been seen as having "snatched the spirit of the age from those responsible for Britpop." While established acts struggled, attention began to turn to the likes of Radiohead and the Verve, who had been previously overlooked by the British media. These two bands—in particular Radiohead—showed considerably more esoteric influences from the 1960s and 1970s that were uncommon among earlier Britpop acts. In 1997, Radiohead and the Verve released their respective albums OK Computer and Urban Hymns, both widely acclaimed. Post-Britpop bands such as Travis, Stereophonics and Coldplay, influenced by Britpop acts, particularly Oasis, with more introspective lyrics, were some of the most successful rock acts of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
caption: Oasis playing live. NME states, "as (What's the Story) Morning Glory? emerged to colossal sales, it became clear that while Blur had won the battle, Oasis were winning the war."[37]
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