Roll With It: the effects of the Battle of Britpop

Wow! An Ed Costello TL! And he's only been here a year!

Well, calling it a 'timeline' isn't strictly accurate - it's supposed to be a retrospective of a TL different from our own, and all updates will be by the same 'author' and from the same 'publication', so to speak (though not the same article). The POD is a different outcome to the Battle of Britpop, though tonight's post will only be an introduction while I'm working out the details of the first few posts.

Comments are encouraged, and criticism welcomed, though I'd prefer it to be of my writing rather than my subject matter. Also, please bear in mind that this is my first attempt at anything like this, so it's not going to be the next 'Decades of Darkness'.

Anyway, without further ado, I give you:

ROLL WITH IT


An Ed Costello Creation


Prologue: England Made Me


"Britpop? It was just people old enough to know better pretending it was the Sixties again."
Damon Albarn, 2003[1]

Mark Beaumont, 'NME Originals', June 2005[2]:

...Britpop was a wonderful period for British music. For a few brief years in the mid-'90s, the charts were full of gloriously confident, upbeat, humourous, glamourous music, portraying everyday tales of common people, parklife, beautiful ones, cigarettes and alcohol and inbetweeners. Bellowing along to Blur was all the sweeter when your parents asked why the mad cockney from Quadrophenia was on the radio[3], even if your dad did like Oasis "because they sound like T-Rex!". For a few brief, wonderful years, it didn't matter that we were fucked, as a nation, because we had Jarvis and Damon and Liam and Luke and Brett to write songs about it. And what made the whole thing so wonderful was that they didn't make the same mistakes their predecessors had, and try and change the world with their songs. They just made music because they loved it, and they did it so well that, for a few brief years, they ended up changing the world anyway...

...Perhaps it was inevitable, the way Britpop collapsed in on itself in a blizzard of cocaine and funeral bouquets. It certainly wasn't a surprise, although the tragedy which precipitated it was a horrifying shock. Britpop became so linked to New Labour's cause that, after May 1997, the end was only a matter of time. Its time had passed, and we may not see anything like it again - and certainly nothing quite like the Battle of Britpop...

*****
[1] As far as I know, this isn't an OTL quote, but Albarn's a moody fucker, so I wouldn't put it past him.

[2] 'NME Originals' appeared in OTL, but they were mostly collections of NME and Melody Maker articles from the relevant time periods. ITTL, they include more biographical information about relevant figures, as well as more editorial input. Mark Beaumont's an NME journalist IOTL too, though his writing style's a bit different. Put it down to quantum.

[3] Phil Daniels, who starred in Quadrophenia as well as appearing on the Blur single 'Parklife'. Last seen in Eastenders, fatally crashing a car into a lamp-post.


So yeah, comments welcome. Next update should have more of the interesting material I just know you're crying out for...
 
Part One: Bring It On Down

"I hope the two of 'em catch AIDs and die."

Noel Gallagher, 1995[1]

Mark Beaumont, 'NME Originals', Summer 2005

Part 3


By 1995, Blur and Oasis were established as the two biggest bands in the country[2], with a rivalry to match. The comparisons were manifold, many too delicious not to make - North versus South, working class against middle class, 'mad fer it' Mancs or ''avin' it' Essex boys. The only comparison which no-one could agree on was that relating to the music itself - the obvious comparison was Beatles v. Stones, but Oasis seemed to fulfil both those roles, while Blur seemed to have more in common with the Kinks and the Small Faces. More importantly, neither band seemed capable of escaping the shadows of such legends, or of moving beyond the retro-pop template of the La's and the Stone Roses. Britpop was in danger of being stillborn as a national movement, even as its crowning glory was fermenting. It needed something spectacular, something with which it could, just possibly, transcend the ghosts of the Sixties that still hung around its godheads...

...The Battle of Britpop peaked in August 1995, but the battle-lines were drawn some six months before, at the 1995 BRIT Awards. Blur claimed four awards to Oasis' three, including Best Band and Best Album, sparking a war of words between the two camps which reached a nadir with Noel Gallagher's infamous AIDs jibe. For most people, however, the Battle of Britpop refers to one week in August 1995, when the nation's biggest bands went up against each other in a battle for chart supremacy that not even the Beatles and the Stones had dared attempt in their heyday - a straight battle for Number One single. It nearly never happened at all - Blur's 'Country House' was originally slated for release two weeks before 'Roll With It', the lead single from the second Oasis album, but problems at the pressing plant meant that both singles were released on the same day...[3]

...In the end, it was far closer than anyone had expected; 'Roll With It' came out on top with 246,000 sales, just 2,000 ahead of 'Country House'.[4] Nevertheless, Oasis had their scond number one, and vengeance for the BRIT Awards. Damon Albarn was left to remark, "They may have won the battle, but we'll win the war..."

*****

[1] Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher's infamous comment about Damon Albarn and Alex James of Blur, which would be the low point of Britpop were it not for Crispian Mills and Kula Shaker.

[2] Fans of Take That and East 17 may well dispute this statement, but they tend not to buy NME.

[3] This is effectively the POD; whereas IOTL Blur are supposed to have purposely moved the date back to compete with Oasis, ITTL there is an actual problem pressing one of the two versions of the 'Country House' single, which necessitates the postponement. It also means that, eventually, only one version of the single reaches the stores on release day...

[4] The OTL figures were 274,000 copies of 'Country House' against 216,000 for 'Roll With It'; ITTL the lack of Blur's alternate single has dropped their share as well as encouraging more people to buy both singles. There's also a surge in Oasis' sales towards the end of the week, which accounts for their eventual victory. As far as is known, there was no problem with barcodes on 'Roll With It' as in OTL, though this could be due to the fact that Noel Gallagher, having won, doesn't now spend ten years bitching about why he didn't.


Right, that's the OTL stuff out of the way - the next update should cover the immediate careers of Blur and Oasis, up to the end of 1995. Comments, as ever, are welcome...
 
No offense, but how is an alternate no. 1 hit going to change the timeline that much, even in just the music world?
 
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