(Credits: Alamy)
Sun 15 June 2025 8:00, UK
You will all remember your teachers at school talking about the three Rs as the pillars of education. But at the university of Britpop, those building blocks were based on the three Bs: boys, banter, and booze. It’s obviously a somewhat masculinised and rather over-simplified approach to music, but they were undeniably the cornerstones on which a sonic boom throughout the 1990s was built. Does that possibly reflect badly on us as a society? Argue amongst yourselves.
Of course, this is only meant as a slightly tongue-in-cheek jibe at the sometimes very one-dimensional archetypes that Britpop fulfilled, but that does not diminish the scale of its seismic success. It may have been reckless, yet the point of the movement was for fun, and not taking itself too seriously. Bands like Oasis and Blur were all too happy to sign up to that mantra, but when it came to Suede, a more refined approach was taken.
To make an allusion in familiar territory, the staples of Britpop were like lager – maybe at best, a cheap vodka – while the sonics of Suede were more like red wine or port. They were scoffed at by the Damon Albarns and Gallaghers of the world for being, in their eyes, way too above their station, but was this really a fair assessment? After all, Suede were still considered one of Britpop’s ‘Big Four’, so how did they end up the runt of the pack in the view of the overlords?
For better or worse, much of this boiled down to perceptions of class. For the likes of Oasis, Blur, and Pulp, northern working-class grittiness was at the front and centre of their brands in appealing to the masses, whereas for Suede frontman Brett Anderson, a southern English background of creative intellectualism and education possibly made him seem a cut above the rest. The selling point of Britpop was to be the boy next door, but in his case, those streets were not the same council estates that the Gallaghers hailed from.
Although he admittedly may have a bit of a biased opinion on the matter, Noel Gallagher seemed pretty keen to offer up his thoughts on Suede, coming as no surprise to anyone. “It’s like, you get a band like Suede,” he mused in a 1994 interview, “And they write pretty decent music and all that, but Brett Anderson’s lyrics are basically a cross between Bowie and Morrissey, and I don’t think that some 16-year-old on the dole is going to understand what he means by ‘Animal Nitrate’ or whatever.”
As Gallagher essentially campaigned for Suede to dumb themselves down – a pretty questionable sentiment at the best of times – his views were evidently not shared by the upper echelons of rock. Indeed, he mentioned David Bowie, and the Starman himself was a self-confessed fan of Suede as a potential second coming to glam rock. But even this seemingly godly seal of approval never persuaded the Oasis guitarist in the band’s favour.
He continued: “The thing about The Smiths is that Johnny Marr was a lad and you knew he was a rock and roller – that’s why I got into them. And I think a lot of kids find Suede too intellectual.” The validity of this argument is one to be debated – and surely for the Suede diehards, one that has an obvious answer as the band still continues to be going strong with a new album on the horizon, while Oasis dine out on a reunion tour.
Suede were largely the ones credited with spearheading Britpop, but unfortunately never got to live in its legacy the way much of their 1990s counterparts continue to do. Critical success and longevity count for part of it – as the new millennium approached and Britpop died a death, so too did Suede’s popularity. Reduced down to a relative shadow of their former glory, it’s easy to sit and point, with hindsight, at all the areas where they went wrong.
Naturally, a lot of this ire is rooted towards Anderson, who, simply from a persona perspective, was nothing like a Liam Gallagher or a Jarvis Cocker. While the latter’s minds would have been largely focused on hedonistic masculinity coupled with maintaining their working-class charm as they shot to fame, Anderson’s artistic proclivities as an androgynous star gave the impression of vintage 1970s glam, and not so much invigorating the spirits of the next generation. In this sense, it wasn’t so much that Suede were smarter, just arguably that their style was more classic than contemporary, thus painting the distorted illusion that they were perhaps too pretentious for the movement.
But nevertheless, it wouldn’t be rock – or Britpop – without a classic spat. That’s precisely the rumblings that made the ‘Big Four’ so prolific in their exports, but it also slightly exposes a hilarious ruse. Britpop may have been all about boys, banter, and booze, but it seemed all it took to break that bravado was someone trying to one-up them. As Suede’s debut album saw them mingling with the upper classes and the Mercury Prize, the green eyes of jealousy were clearly stronger for Oasis and Co than they would ever let on.
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