Mixtape: Britpop's Best

Summer is ending, fall is coming, back to school is starting, and, as is the case for me at this time every year, nostalgia abounds. The other day, I was perusing the magazines at Borders and came across a wonderful thing: Uncut Presents NME Originals: Britpop. I love retrospective shit like that and Uncut and other British music magazines like Mojo do such a great job at it, so naturally, it picked it up. But I also have a personal interest, because, as I've previously mentioned in this space, when I was in college, I had a radio show with the rather derivative name of "London Calling," which, as you can guess, was devoted to music from the UK, mainly Britpop. I had a pretty liberal playlist, though, and would often take to playing bands that weren't from the UK, but sounded like they could be (Sloan); bands that WERE from the UK, but sucked (Sleeper or Menswear anyone?); and bands that were from the US but wished they were from the UK (Nancy Boy).

All in all, it was a fun show with great music, and the experience left me with amazing memories and a fucking amazing CD collection. So when I read this issue of Uncut, I about fell over because it's like déjà vu. For real, many of my memories in life are tied to music (hence, The Racket), and the bands and songs featured in this magazine were like a trip in the way-back machine, to the simpler, more musically fruitful era of 1990-1998. And what I love about British music magazines is their unabashed enthusiasm for music, their genuine love for and excitement about new bands and sounds. I don't think any American music magazine comes close to capturing that electrifying feeling of being audience to something truly fantastic the way they do. I mean, can you imagine what it must have been like to see the Verve back when they were playing clubs the size of my apartment? To hear Jarvis Cocker's wonderfully louche voice for the very first time? To being in the room when Noel and Liam got into one of their famous cocaine-fuelled dustups???

So this edition of The Racket's Mixtape series is devoted, in no particular order, to the music that shaped my formative years: Britpop. It's the dog's bollocks, mate!

Blur - "There's No Other Way"
For me, the song that started it all. Yeah, it's a still little Madchester-y, but you could tell it was different, somehow, because it was less baggy sounding and more poppy. By that, I mean, this song was more shrunken cardigans and nerdy glasses and less Kangols and rugby shirts. Yes, there's a distinction in there.

Ash - "Girl from Mars"
Supergrass - "Alright"
The Verve - "Already There"
This song is also on the fantastic soundtrack to Gregg Araki's "The Doom Generation," the second movie in his "teen apocalypse trilogy." All of Araki's soundtracks are dope – better than the movies, in my opinion.

Elastica - "Line Up"
Paul Weller - "Wild Wood"
There's also a great Portishead remix of this song.

Blur - "She's So High"
Blur - "Boys & Girls"
Suede - "Animal Nitrate"
So it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this song is about drugs. Actually, that could be said of pretty much every song on Suede's self-titled debut album. And if it isn't about drugs, it's about gender-ambiguous sex. Or about doing drugs and having gender-ambiguous sex. With this first album, Suede was, in the parlance of the NME, widely considered to be the Rolls Royce in the swimming pool – that's how big they expected this band to get. And they weren't all wrong; the record was brilliant, totally deserving of all the praise heaped upon it. Sexy and nasty and sad, somewhat unsettling, and ultimately, impossible to follow up.

Oasis - "Supersonic"
Pulp - "Joyriders"
Quite possibly the most sinister pop song since Jethro Tull's lecherous masterpiece, "Aqualung," "Joyriders" makes you want to shower immediately after listening: "Mister, we just want your car/ 'cause we're taking a girl to the reservoir…" Ew.

Oasis - "Don't Look Back in Anger"
Oasis - "Live Forever"
Elastica - "Stutter"
Cast - "History"
Suede - "Stay Together"
Supergrass - "Late in the Day"
My favorite Supergrass song, by far. It wouldn't sound out of place on an Elton John album and so doesn't really fit with most of the other songs on this list in terms of sound, but is here because it's lovely and jaunty and I like Gaz Coombes' voice.

Suede - "So Young"
Pulp - "Common People"
Blur - "This Is a Low"
Blur had a long, successful run as Britpop's poster boys. The Blur/Oasis feud took up many column inches in the British press, with Blur eventually coming out on top. The hoo-ha barely registered on the radar over here because U.S. radio was too busy drooling over crap like Hootie & the Blowfish and Garth Brooks. But over there, this was front-page news! Why doesn't good music mean as much here as it does there? Anyway, this song is really something. After "Girls & Boys," the first single on the Parklife album came out, everyone was like, "Wha?" The disco bass, the irritating chorus, it was hard to tell what Blur were on about. Well, what they were on about was genius. Parklife is a solid album, front to back, with a number of great singles ("Tracy Jacks," "To the End"), none of which sound anything alike or formulaic. "This Is a Low" is a great example of their versatility. I like the unsteady, sort of seasick, slow, roiling tune. I like the combination of the acoustic and electric guitar.