When Britain was cool

31 years ago today, the Battle of Britpop reached its climax. One week earlier, on 14 August 1995, Britain's two most popular bands had released a single on the same day: Blur with Country House, and Oasis with Roll With It. The press branded it the Battle of Britpop, and people rushed to music stores to buy whichever copy would prove which band they liked best. Britpop had recently emerged as a reaction against American grunge, the moody, nihilistic sound of bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Where grunge was dark, Britpop was bright and optimistic, built on catchy, guitar-driven pop. It also carried a strong sense of place, a distinctly British aesthetic, and lyrics that captured the reality of everyday life in Britain. Both Blur and Oasis had broken through in 1994. Releasing singles on the same day turned the race to sell the most copies into the perfect story to fill the summer news vacuum. For one week, the Battle of Britpop was national news. On 20 August, the results came in. Blur won the Battle, selling more copies throughout the week. But Oasis would win the war: their album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, featuring Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger, would later become the biggest-selling British album of the decade. Funnily enough, today both singles are considered among the weaker entries in their respective bands' catalogues. But at the time, it was never really about the songs. It was about picking a side, in one of the last shared cultural moments of pre-internet Britain. Cool Britannia The Battle of Britpop was peak “Cool Britannia” – the mid-to-late-1990s cultural moment in which everything British seemed cool again: Britpop ruled the charts. The Spice Girls became global superstars, Kate Moss and Alexander McQueen transformed fashion, and films like Trainspotting captured a new British self-confidence. As the press put it, London was “swinging” again after the Swinging Sixties. But more importantly, there was a renewed sense of national pride. Suddenly, it seemed acceptable to be proudly British again. The Union Flag could be seen anywhere (most famously on Noel Gallagher's guitar and a Spice Girl's dress). “The Union Jack suddenly takes on a cool connotation, stripped of the associations the far right had given it in the 1980s,” Guillaume Clément, a researcher of UK politics and pop music at the University of Rennes 1, told The European Correspondent. “It becomes a fashion icon, and a brand in its own right.” The cultural moment coincided with a political one. After 18 years of Conservative rule, Tony Blair led New Labour to a landslide victory in May 1997. His government presented itself as young, modern, and in tune with the country's cultural renaissance. Combined with a fresh economic boom, falling unemployment, and rising confidence, there was a sense that Britain was entering a new chapter. But it didn’t last. The death of Princess Diana in August 1997 killed the mood, Britpop lost its commercial dominance, the Spice Girls split up, and the optimism that had accompanied New Labour's election slowly faded. By the turn of the millennium, it was over. Seeds of Brexit? Some commentators have argued that the era of Cool Britannia planted some of the seeds of Brexit: it helped rehabilitate a certain kind of pride and national symbols, feeding into a discussion on British identity tainted by nationalist exceptionalism. “It made flag-waving nationalism acceptable,” the Guardian wrote in 2018. John Harris, a British journalist and author of a book on Britpop, isn't buying it. “That's absurd,” he told TEC. “Britpop was ironic, playful, celebratory. The mood that fired Brexit was resentful, bitter, angry.” According to him, economics and the UK's regional imbalances were what caused Brexit, not pop records. Clément does concede that Britpop was very white, masculine and English, and that it fed the rise of “lad culture”: a brash, macho vision of Britishness popularised by ”lad mags.” “A form of masculinism compatible with the populist characteristics of the Brexit vote,” he said. But he doesn’t believe in a causal link. “I think television in the 2000s, but especially the tabloids, probably did more to shape public opinion and create fertile ground for Brexit,” he added. Nostalgia Even so, the era is often remembered as Britain's last golden age. Last year, with Oasis reforming and Labour back in power, nostalgia came with them. “Call it Cool Britannia 25,” the Guardian wrote. “Cool Britannia rules again,” ran the Sun. There was also a revival of 90s fashion. But many observers agree: this is less of a renaissance than nostalgia for a time that seemed more carefree. “The world is an immeasurably more troubled place than it was back then, particularly in the UK,” Harris explained. “So even people who weren't around at the time understand the 1990s as a much more innocent, hedonistic time.” One image sticks with him: at Britpop's biggest gigs, “people were completely wrapped up in the moment,” he said. “From a modern perspective, seeing a crowd of thousands with not a single mobile phone in sight may well look like the embodiment of a kind of lost innocence.”