I went into this one with minimal spoilers, just a couple of the song names, so my memory of this disc was that it was Britpop-adjacent. I am very passionate about Good Britpop. A lot of it is shit.
1. The Smiths - This Charming Man 💜
This is the first Smiths song I ever heard, as part of 'The Best Album In The World... Ever!' (which is where I first heard a few of the songs on this mix). It's flawless. All 4 members of the band deliver an exciting part to complete this song and Johnny Marr's guitar part is an obvious high point but I'd like to point out how great the bassline is! It's a perfect pretentious pop song and the only reason it doesn't get elevated to Favourite Songs Ever status is because of its ubiquity.
2. New Order - Blue Monday 1988 🎀
Blue Monday is more than just a song; it's a whole emotional state of being. Just hearing the intro to Blue Monday gives me the biggest rush. I love the original 1983 version and I love this 1988 remix equally. The persistent beat, the layers of sounds, the apathetic flat vocal - again, this is a flawless song. Gillian Gilbert is one of the most underrated musicians of her time and she deserves so much more credit for all of the amazing electronic sounds that made New Order so important. I cannot state enough how highly I rate Blue Monday.
3. Pulp - Do You Remember The First Time? 💜
Jarvis Cocker's low voice reverberates through my floor, my bones, my soul. He's a top class lyricist, so clever and witty. Pulp songs are such wonderful little vignettes of every day drama, and this song casts him in a familiar role of 'the mistress'(what's the male version of 'the other woman'? Is there a phrase or is this some sexism?). I think the line "Jesus, it must be great to be straight" is brilliant but I don't understand it in the context of this song - I always assumed Jarvis was pleading the girl not to finish with him and be faithful to her boyfriend. The rest of the band are also great here but it's the vocal that stands out as the highlight.
4. Neutral Milk Hotel - Two Headed Boy 🔵
And now the Americans enter to break up my Britpop party. Jeff Mangum cannot sing in key, which works well here - he switches from calm to yelling which works well for him. I have no idea what the lyrics are about; I originally got to know this song via a Dresden Dolls cover so I wonder whether there's any line to be drawn between this and their Coin-Operated Boy? Anyway, this is a simple acoustic guitar folk song.
5. New Order - True Faith '94 💜
Dance music, but make it melancholy. Pulling that off is difficult but New Order excel at it. This is a song you can dance to in the club or mope to in the corner and I rate that as a concept. I love the sound of the chorus and the "I feel so extraordinary" opening line. It's a second New Order song in a short time but I am happy with that decision when the songs are this good.
6. Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californication 🔵
I'm not totally certain but it's possible that this is my favourite song of theirs, as a person who knows their big hits but isn't really a fan who would delve any deeper. The vocal line is good; the song is chill but he delivers some of the lines in a fast-paced style. There are a lot of words in it and I'm not entirely sure what the song is about - something to do with Californian culture seeping out into the world? - but I can pick out lines like "space may be the final frontier but it's made in a Hollywood basement" which I quite like (I believe the Moon Landing happened though, for what it's worth). It's a bit too long with a guitar solo which I don't need, as I feel I'm always saying.
7. The Cranberries - Zombie 🔵
This has the grungiest noisy guitar and terrible sounding drums - Zombie has the makings of a great goth record if it had been produced properly. I think I like Dolores' voice but I do kind of hate that yelping that she does. The abrupt ending with the instruments dropping out is a cool way to round off the song.
8. Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely 🟡
Oh Comely is a very long, repetitive thing and I've listened to it numerous times over the years but the words haven't sunk in or even stuck in my memory. People talk about this album as a revolutionary, deep conceptual story but so far I've listened to 2 songs from it and neither of them are clear to me. Once you make it to 5 minutes of droning there's a bit that's more interesting but then there's a trumpet and they stretch this thing out for 8 minutes and I'm so bored.
9. Blur - Girls & Boys 🟣
I have a real love-hate relationship with Blur; they have some great songs and their drummer is a Labour councillor now but on the other hand they're class tourists, Damon treated Justine Frischmann horribly and their bass player is a Tory who makes cheese now. However, Girls & Boys is undeniably an absolute banger of a record, maybe their best one. It's really catchy and good fun with a genius chorus and excellent use of electronics. Damon's Mockney accent is unbearable but I suppose at least I get some pleasure in taking the piss out of it. This is the start of Blur and Britpop being all about "lads lads lads" though and I really hate that whole culture.
10. Pixies - Where Is My Mind? 🔵
The riff that opens this song is classic. The recording sounds so amateur in the way the sounds are positioned but that doesn't disguise how well put together the song is, all the parts work well. It's a good song but its inclusion in Fight Club makes it harder to love. In fact, Fight Club, the Smiths and Neutral Milk Hotel form parts of another Bad Culture which is just as gross as what Blur are peddling - the horrible 'not like other guys' intelligent hipster man who hates women just as much as the lad but in a less straight-forward way.
11. The Boo Radleys - Wake Up Boo! 🔵
The acapella intro for this song is unnecessary and I assume there's a single edit that omits it, but that's not what I have here. Wake Up Boo! has really strong 90s breakfast TV vibes to me - I can't pinpoint it exactly but I bet the chorus was absolutely hammered on morning shows and ads for a few years after it was a hit. It sounds really cheerful - the quintessential sunny happy morning song, even though I'm sure there are some darker lyrics in there. I don't rate anything else they recorded but they hit on a winner with this.
12. Garbage - Stupid Girl 🔵
I don't know what it is about the intro to this song but it feels like a sci-fi movie, like I'm in some kind of ship or plane that's swooping down into a futuristic city, weaving between skyscrapers - a sort of 90s Batman/Blade Runner kind of scene. Shirley Manson is super cool and I love the industrial rock sounds in this. There seemed to be a lot of music around at this time with restrained or bored-sounding women talking about sex and violence over electronics but usually they have really posh accents so it's cool to have a Scottish woman inhabiting this space.
13. Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 🟢
The third and final of their songs to appear, and the only one where there's a full band involved. The distortion on the guitars is turned up so high that the sound is failing and that sounds great with the yelled vocal. This is definitely better than Oh Comely - it's still relentlessly steady in its pace but it's exciting rather than dragging on. It closes with a flourish of brass though, which I don't really need.
14. EMF - Unbelievable 🟢
I don't have very positive feelings about 'baggy' as a genre overall but this is a good song. The members of EMF should be living in total luxury from the royalties they must get from this song being in ads all the time - kudos to them for coming up with that hook and licensing it out. My body's reaction to this song is to dance like Bez from the Happy Mondays, for better or worse.
15. McAlmont & Butler - Yes 🟣
When I first heard this on the aforementioned "Best Album..." I was very confused by its place - it didn't sound like Britpop and for a long time I had assumed that the singer was a woman, when in fact the performer is Mr David McAlmont. Yes is a really great 'fuck you' song and I love to sing along with it even though I'm very much Team Anderson and not Team Butler when it comes to Suede. There's so much going on here with the vocals, the strings and the piano that the guitar part is barely noticeable, which was probably a conscious decision on Bernard Butler's part but still interesting. Unfortunately nothing else on the McAlmont & Butler albums comes close to being as good as this song - it's definitely a one-off for them. The version on this mix fades out before the album version's ending which has all the musicians applauding, which is great because I can't stand that (see also: Whatever by Oasis). I once heard Yes played in the venue before Suede came on stage which I thought was a weird choice.
16. James - Sit Down 🔵
Another of the very much overplayed indie disco Absolute Radio hits. Like Wake Up Boo!, it's really cheery and lovely and positive. The song is well-done, but I understand why bands like Suede were formed as a reaction to the dullness of indie around this time. Still, it's a nice song and my mum sings along with it when it's on the radio so that sounds like a success to me.
17. Blondie - Atomic 🔵
Huge spy thriller vibes from that opening riff. Atomic is new-wave but at the same time it's disco. It's largely instrumental which often fails to hold my attention but this song is like going on a journey and I always enjoy the trip.
18. Babybird - You're Gorgeous 🟢
We end with another 90s cliché chorus that I strongly associate with TV background music from that era. I don't think I heard anything other than the chorus until I was a grown-up so I was surprised by how kinky and dark the verses are in comparison to the chorus and cutesy keyboard part. I don't think it's the love song that I assumed it would be.
It's really strange thinking about songs like Wake Up Boo! and You're Gorgeous, and also Spaceman by Babylon Zoo which I'll cover someday - they exist in a time before I was properly aware of pop music, but those hooks must have been so ubiquitous on CBBC and adverts when I was little that they feel like theme tunes or jingles or Christmas carols to me rather than just pop songs. This disc had a couple of themes running through it - those Britpop-adjacent one hit wonders and classics, but also fake-deep hipster bro music. Thankfully, despite being used in a million adverts, Blue Monday transcends any such narrow associations.
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