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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Hey there Hit Parade listeners. What you're about to hear is Part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com hitparadeplus you'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus Hit Parade the Bridge, our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again to join, that's slate.com hitparadeplus thanks and now please enjoy part one of this hit Parade episode.
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Foreign.
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Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why is this song number one series on today's show 28 years ago in May of 1968 1995, this single connection by the band Elastica rose to number two on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song was ubiquitous on US Alternative radio at the time and even crossing over to certain top 40 pop stations. It had a danceable beat and a bit of punk attitude. To American listeners, Elastica were just the latest new band to offer catchy punk adjacent rock at the peak of Alternative Nation. The band would even join the traveling Lollapalooza festival that summer. But a few things about this band and this song sailed over the heads of my fellow Yanks. For one thing, Connection was a cheeky homage to previous waves of British art punk. For another thing, Elastica's frontwoman was at that time the object of fascination in the British tabloids for her musical power couple relationship with the lead singer of another leading youth UK band, Blur. And finally, as only the most Anglophilic Americans were aware, in 1995, bands like Elastica and Blur, as well as Blur's Rivals, a band called Oasis, were spawning a total craze on the charts in their homeland, a mania that was defiantly English. They called this madness Brit pop.
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Maybe I just wanna fly, Wanna live but don't wanna die maybe I just wanna breathe.
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Maybe I just Just last month on Hit Parade, we talked about two previous waves of British rock that took over our charts in America the British invasion of the 1960s. And the second British invasion of the 1980s. In the 90s, Brit Pop took elements from both of these prior waves of British pop and gave them, if this is possible, an even more British spin.
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Put my trousers on, have a cup of tea and I think about leaving the house.
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The bands of Brit pop actually saw their mission as returning UK music to the center of rock after years of dominance by American grunge.
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Hey wait, I got a real name.
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And in America, we were still consuming plenty of British rock in the 90s, but we were following our own trends. And not all of the Brit pop bands flopped here. For an instant, Oasis were the biggest rock band on the American charts.
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And all the roads we have to walk a winding and all the lights.
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But the hubris of Oasis ultimately did them in on both sides of the Atlantic. And while Brit pop produced several songs now considered classics. Even in Britain, Britpop was a remarkably short lived phenomenon. Today on Hit Parade, we will cross the pond one more time, looking at both the US and UK charts to analyze the control group in our Transatlantic Lab study. The British Invasion that didn't invade. Why didn't these 90s bands do better in America? In England, there was certainly no lack of chart excitement, most especially the week when it seemed the entire United Kingdom was fixated on two singles that were vying for their number one spot. And that's where your hit parade marches today, the week of August 26, 1995 on the UK's Official Charts Company chart, when we learned the outcome of the most epic British chart battle since Beatles versus Stones or Slade versus Wizard. A head to head singles war between this song, Country House by Blur, and this song.
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You say don't let anybody get in your way.
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Roll with it by Oasis. The two rival bands had ginned up a media frenzy by deliberately playing chicken with their songs, and only one hit could wind up atop the heap. One band won the battle, the other, you might say, won the war, both at home and in the States. But it all might have been a Pyrrhic victory buried in tabloid headlines and cocaine. Three decades later, we can finally try to answer the question, what the hell was Britpop? Do you know what I mean?
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Kiss the girl, she's not.
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In last month's Hit Parade episode, our deep dive on the two British invasions, we talked about a slew of 80s hitmakers that made the second British invasion of a watershed on the US charts. The human League, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Culture Club Wham, Tears for Fears all scored big hits on the Hot 100. But I didn't even mention this band, which emerged at the same time. The Smiths A Manchester foursome led by singer Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr launched their recording career in 1983 and began scoring UK hits in 1984. Like this charming man. I didn't mention the Smiths in our British Invasion episode because they scored no American hits. 0 not one of their songs ever cracked our Hot 100. We're playing the Smiths now not only because they provided the seeds for Britpop, scores of 90s UK bands cited them as an influence. They also give us our first clue for why Brit pop never really took off in America. The Smiths recorded for the independent Rough Trade label and scored their biggest hits on the UK Independent Singles or UK Indie chart. Even in the uk, while the Smiths did hit the main pop chart with some very catchy songs, They never hit the top five in their homeland and only rarely hit the top ten for the duration of their all too brief five year recording career. The Smiths were primarily known for being at the vanguard of UK indie music. In essence, this was what Brit pop descended from. It was a more commercial version of UK indie. And 80s UK indie was not all Brit pop borrowed from. It took musical inspiration from both British invasions as well as the glam rock and punk that came in between. Frankly, even defining Brit pop remains rather challenging. Brit pop was less a genre than a movement, a sensibility.
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I thought that I heard someone say now there's no time for running away.
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Britpop's bands gave the sense that they were creating the soundtrack to the lives of a new generation of British youth, according to AllMusic's definition of the movement. And it was very definitely British youth they were aiming at. Britpop celebrated and commented on their lives, their culture and their musical heritage, with little regard for whether that specificity would make them less accessible to American audiences. Indeed, a genealogical family tree of Brit pop would have a thick trunk and many branches. You have to go back decades to prior generations of British population. Not just the obvious influence of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but also the much more self consciously British work of the Kinks. And the who.
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I won't get to give what I'm after till the day I die.
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Britpop obviously took inspiration from David Bowie, especially his glam period, As well as even more glammy glam icons like T. Rex's Mark Bolan. From the punk movement, Britpop took cues from the short sharp pop of the Buzzcocks. And the mod rock of the Jam, And from turn of 80's new wave. Brit pop owed a debt to the power pop of Squeeze. And the angular guitar pop of xtc. What do all of these songs I just played have in common? All were hits in the UK and non hits in the us. So yes, Britpop at its root was inextricably British. But as we discussed last month, both British invasions in the States did generate many big US hits that sounded resolutely English. Both in the 60s things have changed.
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She doesn't love me now she's made.
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It clear and in the 80s our.
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House here has a crowd there's always something happening and it's usually quite loud.
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Our mum, she's our house proud so what gives? Why did Britpop dominate charts at home but fail to fully connect in the States? Before we walk through Brit pop history, I'm going to offer three main theories for this US shortfall, which we'll come back to throughout the show. Some reasons why we Yanks Blew Brit Pop Off Brit Pop blow off theory number one in America, British music of the 90s did not mean Brit Pop.
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Thursday doesn't even start It's Friday I'm in love.
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Brit pop blow off Theory 2America didn't need Brit pop to carry us out of the grunge years.
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Sometimes I give myself a drinks.
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Sometimes.
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My mind blows tricks on me and.
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Finally, Britpop blow off theory 3 even when Americans liked the music, Brit pop didn't feel to us like a movement. That movement took a while to coalesce, even in old Blighty. Let's take it back to the start. Besides all of the 60s, 70s and 80s acts I name checked above, from the Kinks to T. Rex to the Smiths, some specific scenes that immediately preceded Brit pop tilled the soil whence it flowered. Indeed, you might say a newer breed of flower power gave Brit pop its early juice. Let's talk for a bit about Manchester or more to the point, Mad Chester, the blend of psychedelic rock and acid house dance beats that inspired many a drug fueled rave in England's northern provinces and lit up UK pop at the turn of the 80s into the the 90s. The Stone Roses, a four piece combo led by vocalist Ian Brown and guitarist John Squire, galvanized the Mad Chester scene with their 1989 self titled debut. The Stone Roses album showed off their versatility. On several tracks they were more or less a traditional British rock combo with a knack for writing indelible pop songs like Elephant Stone or she Bangs the Drums. But when they turned up the psychedelic funk and leaned on drummer Gary Mounfield AKA Mani as on their hit Fool's Gold The Stone Roses sounded like they belonged in a nightclub. The fact that this scene was flowering in Manchester, not London, was significant. The epicenter of the Madchester scene was the club the Hacienda, co founded by Factory Records owner Tony Wilson and Manchester band New Order, who were themselves leaning harder into club beats by the end of the 1980s. Wilson's major discovery at the peak of Madchester was the shambling combo Happy Mondays, fronted by drug fueled vocalist Sean Ryder. Happy Monday's performances were more party than rock show. One member, a Maraca player called Bez, danced more than he played and their hits like 1990s Step on were groovy, trippy and defined the so called baggy sound. Notably, these Madchester bands charted decently in America, not on the Hot 100 where they never came close to the pop top 40, but on Billboard's Modern Rock chart which had launched in 1988. This is a theme I will come back to repeatedly in this story. Even when this wave of British bands didn't score American pop hits, they took refuge on US alternative rock radio at a time when alternative was for many audiences becoming the new pop anyway. The Stone roses scored top 10 hits on the Modern rock chart with she Bangs the Drums and Fool's Gold and Happy Mondays went top 10 modern rock with Step on and even hit number one on that chart in late 1990 with the trippy kinky Afro. By 1990 and 91, both the UK pop charts and the U S Modern rock chart were awash in baggy, funky and ravy British rock bands including Norwich quintet the Charlatans, known as the Charlatans UK in the States due to a band name dispute. Who took the Only One I Know to number nine UK and number five US Modern rock. Or scottish foursome? The soup dragons, whose funky cover of the rolling stones I'm free hit number five uk number two us modern rock. And Liverpool sextet the Farm, who took Groovy Trains. That song title alone really says it all about the Manchester movement to number six UK and number 15 US modern rock. Groovy Train even almost made the US top 40 on the pop side, peaking on the Hot 100 at number 41. Running parallel with the Madchester sound was a subset of UK indie rock known as shoegaze, a rumbling form of rock that buried pop hooks under layers of guitar. Early pioneers of the sound in the late 80s included Scottish noise rockers the Jesus and Mary Chain. And by the early 90s, the shoegaze aesthetic had been perfected by the Dublin based My Bloody Valentine, whose leader Kevin Shields, sculpted abstract melodies through a wall of aggressive feedback. MBV's 1991 album Loveless, led by the minor modern rock hit Only Shallow, would go on to influence generations of UK and US bands. Meanwhile, the original leading lights of 80s UK Indy the Smiths, had disbanded, leaving lead singer Morrissey to a productive solo career. As I noted in our Lost and Lonely edition of Hit Parade solo Morrissey scored far more US hits than his band ever had, a string of top tens on the modern rock chart. Between Morrissey and goth slash post punk pioneers the Cure, who were still scoring modern rock hits into the early 90s, a generation of Americans came up believing the sound of alternative rock was a moody, doomy singer with a British accent.
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I've been living so long with my pictures of.
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And the janglier side of the Smiths was also well represented at the turn of the 90s on hits like There She Goes by Liverpool indie pop band the Laws. Some have argued that this Beatlesque gem the Law's only major hit, number 13 in the UK and number two on the US Modern Rock chart in 1991, was the unofficial preamble to Britpop. Of all these sounds and scenes. It appeared that Madchester and its trippy offshoots would emerge as the predominant sound of British rock in the 1990s. The most acclaimed act of the early decade was Scotland's Primal Scream. Led by former Jesus and Mary Chain drummer Bobby Gillespie, their album Scream A Delica fused acid house and rave to progressive rock and soul. As late as the summer of 1991, the UK pop and US modern rock charts were awash in British guitar combos with dance beats like, say, in Spiral Carpets, who, Footnote were touring with a drum tech named Noel Gallagher, who'd yet to form his own band. We'll hear from Noel a bit later. In the middle of this rave rock wave came a new London quartet who scored their first major hit, number eight UK five US modern rock, in mid-1991. It's tempting to call this song Britpop's first hit, but that would be incorrect, since this is not exactly how Blur wound up sounding. Formed in 1989, Blur vocalist Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Roundtree didn't seem like world conquerors when they issued their debut album Leisure in 1991. The CD received respectable reviews in the rock press, including England's hyperactive music magazines like Q, New Musical Express and Smash Hits. But no one would have distinguished Blur from the likes of the charlatans or in spiral carpets. At the time, even Blur's band name sounded druggie and rave adjacent. Still, Blur's single There's no Other Way did well on both sides of the Atlantic. But when the follow up single the Polyrhythmic Bang stalled at number 24 in the UK and went nowhere in the States, it looked like Blur might be a flash in the pan. By late 91, the mad Chester sound had been fully mainstreamed, no less than U2. The 80s anthemic rock icons picked up on the sound for their 1991 album Achtung Baby. And when U2's mysterious ways topped the U S modern rock chart, sitting right next to it at number two was Primal Scream's 60s style groove movin On Up. Blur, disinterested in continuing with this waning trend and dissatisfied with their debut, began evolving away from the Madchester rhythm. Though it reached only number 32 in the UK and went nowhere in the US, Blur's punky 1992 single pop scene hinted at a new direction. Critics would later point to Pop Scene, both its sound and its title as formative for what Brit pop became. So among the canonical Brit pop bands, Blur hit the charts first. But the band that truly signaled a sea change was afoot was a different, more decadent London quartet whose sound never had anything to do with Madchester. Fronted by the androgynous Brett Anderson, this band took 70s glam and 80s indie and gave them a modern twist. They called themselves Suede. John Harris, author of the book Britpop AKA the Last Party, wrote that Suede speaks in the elegant outre language of outsiderdom. Not since the florid Morrissey was paired with guitar hero Johnny Marr in the Smiths had a band nailed the alluring combo of camp and chorus skating rock that vocalist Anderson and guitarist Bernard Butler brought to Suede. And like the Smiths, Suede's elliptical lyrical perspective was un uniquely British. Suede's 1992 debut single The Drowners only reached number 49 in the UK but kicked off a frenzy in the British music press. Melody Maker puts Suede on their cover and dubbed them the best new band in Britain weeks before the single was even released. By the time the band's self titled debut album arrived in the spring of 1993 with a cover of two androgynous people kissing their genders impossible to discern, a fever had gripped Britain that Rolling Stone called Suede mania. Metal Mickey brought Suede to the UK top 20 spurred by a provocative performance on Top of the Pops and The single even cracked the top 10 on Billboard's Modern Rock charts, the first and last time Suede would make any US airplay chart. This was a clear sign of a disconnect between British and American tastes. Indeed, since Nirvana's chart breakthrough the year before, British rock rock was perceived as taking a back seat to American grunge. But that was an oversimplification. The truth was, in 1992 and 93, British rock was still doing fine on our charts. The Cure, for example, scored one of their biggest US hits with Friday I'm in Love, number 18 on the Hot 100 and number one on the Modern Rock chart in 92.
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I don't care if Monday's Blue Tuesday it's Grey and Wednesday too Thursday I don't care about you It's Friday I'm in love.
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New Order had the top modern rock hit of 1993 with the jangly regret, a six week number one on that chart.
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I would like a place I could come up.
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And even Morrissey, borrowing some of the same 70s glam moves as Suede, scored his biggest US hit to date in the fall of 92 with the Mick Ronson produced Tomorrow.
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Tomorrow, does it have to come? All I ask of you is again.
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To American ears, as per my Brit pop blow off theory, number one British music in the 90s did just fine as long as it echoed styles we already associated with the Brits. Blur, on the other hand, we're thinking about a different tomorrow than Morrissey.
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Hold on for tomorrow.
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In 1993, Blur returned with their second album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, led by the single For Tomorrow, a top 30 UK hit about London's famed Primrose Hill. Critics called the album a reinvention, a renouncement of baggy and shoegaze styles and an unabashed embrace of a Kinks like English style. It was also seen as a response to Suede's emergence, which spurred Damon Albarn to rivalrous feelings. The Blur album's follow up single, Chemical World, managed to crack the top 30 on the US modern rock chart, peaking at number 27, Doing much better on the US charts that summer of 93 was a new band whose angular sound fit in alongside grunge on our charts. A fivesome who called themselves Radiohead. Creep, Radiohead's indelible debut single, which reached number two on the modern modern rock chart and even cracked the top 40 on the Hot 100, is generally classified alongside other 90s slacker rock anthems, even though Radiohead had little to do with grunge Indeed, the band had little to do with any rock scene of the 90s, although their subsequent work would be held up as a foil for what Brit pop became We'll Come Back to Radiohead. By mid-1993, Suede had pulled two more UK hits from the self titled Suede album, the anthemic Animal Nitrate, a number seven hit, And the Bowie esque so Young, which hit number 22. Moving quickly to consolidate their command of the British rock field, Suede went back into the studio by the end of 93 to record a follow up, but relations within the band were deteriorating. Guitarist Bernard Butler would leave the group not long after recording one last Suede single, Stay Together, which reached number three in the UK in early 1994. It would be the last UK top 10 hit for Suede for more than two years. Though their sophomore album Dog Man Star won critical acclaim in 94 and did feature Bernard Butler's guitar work, his departure set Suede back and essentially cleared the field for others to pick up the emerging Brit pop mantle. Fortunately, more than one band was well equipped for the job, including a mostly female band whose leader had previously been a member of Suede. Back in 1988, Justine Frischman Co founded Suede with her then boyfriend Brett Anderson and served as its original guitarist before Bernard Butler arrived, leaving the band in 1992 before Suede made its formal recording debut. Frischman then formed Elastica with a short lived Suede drummer Justin Welch, adding bassist Annie Holland and guitarist Donna Matthews. Elastica's debut single, the punky Stutter arrived in the fall of 1993 to near instant acclaim. By the winter of 94 elastica had already issued a follow up single lineup and developed a bespoke sound borrowing heavily from late 70s Post punk bands like Wire and the Stranglers. Line up cracked the UK top 20 and prompted feverish excitement for an Elastica debut album which would take another year to arrive. Meanwhile, another acclaimed, seemingly new band had, like Frischman, actually been knocking around the scene much longer. Pulp by the mid-90s were more than a decade and a half old. The Sheffield born George Jarvis Cocker had started Pulp in 1978 at age 15 and went through several band lineups and indie LPs through the 80s, none of which had any chart impact. Finally, in 1993 as Britpop emerged on the charts, Pulp, embodied by the suave Cocker, who was a witty presence both on stage and on the telly, were in the right place at the right time. At last signed to a major label, Island Records Pulp recorded their acclaimed reboot album his and hers and began cracking the UK chart. Lip gloss reached number 50 and in 1994 do you remember the first time cracked the UK top 40 at number 33. Pulp's sound was unique, drawing on synth pop, post punk and Bowie isms and applying them to short, sharp edged songs, ripping holes in British culture and the class system like Elastica. It would take another year and a new album for Pulp to have their galvanizing chart moment by 1994. The prior wave of British rock was, you might say, enjoying its last gasp. Morrissey, who had essentially been grandfathered into Brit pop as an elder statesman, turned in one more sardonic masterwork with the album Vauxhall and I, which topped the UK album chart and gave him his biggest 90s solo single on both sides of the Atlantic. The more you ignore me the closer I get.
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The more you ignore me the closer I get.
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But the pivotal music event of mid-1994 was the Sad passing of a reluctant icon. Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's death in April 94 is often regarded as a before and after event in the history of 90s rock in America. As we'll discuss later, it did not so much signal the end of the grunge boomlet as the morphing of alternative rock into several different strains. In the UK, however, where Nirvana had scored several top 10 hits and chart topping albums, Cobain's passing was, with hindsight, more epochal. The end of Nirvana seemed to throw off American style alt rock, kicking off a more decadent phase of ebullient Brit pop. It is perhaps a notable coincidence that literally the same month Kurt Cobain died, arguably the landmark Brit pop album was released. Pitchfork would later call Blur's album Parklife quote Brit pop's catalyst, a colorful pop centric palette of great scope and eclecticism effectively launched with a disco song. That disco song was Girls and Boys, which was something of a Trojan horse. Nothing else on Park Life sounded like it, and yet it was an ambassador for the LP's whole cheeky attitude. In essence, the in joke of Girls and Boys was it sounded like an Ibiza club song that only a soused British lad or lass would travel to Ibiza to dance to. Even on their most danceable hit, Blur were taking the piss. It was also Blur's biggest hit to date, reaching the number five on the UK chart and number four on the US Modern Rock chart. It even cracked the Hot 100, peaking on the Big Pop chart at number 59. The song may have been a frothy distraction in America, but in England it was an event as Park Life, the album entered the UK album chart at number one. Parklife never entered the Billboard 200 album chart in America at all. The explanation for this divergence is perhaps best explained by the album's title track, a top 10 hit in the UK, which might be the most British single that ever Britished. On park the song. Blur invited actor Phil Daniels, famed for playing Londoners in everything from the film quadrophenia to the TV soap EastEnders, to speak sing the verses, which capture little more than lazing around London observing joggers and feeding pigeons. Pigeons in the park. Awash in pub slang, the song would make no sense to anyone outside England. The British loved it.
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You should cut down on your pulp life, mate. Get some exercise.
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Parklife. The album spawned four UK hits and eventually went quadrilateral quadruple platinum. While it was on its conquering run, a band from Manchester made its belated debut, and they would prove Blur's most formidable rivals. Remember Noel Gallagher? After he finished his stint as a roadie for Inspiral Carpets, Knoll agreed to join a band that his brother Liam Gallagher was already fronting, on the condition that Noel could write all the band's material and take control of their sound. The band, a quintet comprising the Gallagher brothers plus rhythm guitarist Paul Bonehead Arthur, bassist Paul Gwigsy McGuigan and drummer Tony McCarroll, were renamed Oasis after a venue on an Inspiral Carpets tour poster, and Knoll proceeded to supply Oasis with brute force rock songs with stadium sized hooks and anthemic, stripped down and heavily distorted playing. Knowles insisted instincts were ruthlessly commercial and spot on. After signing to the influential Creation label, Oasis debut single Supersonic cracked the UK top 40 immediately in April 1994. What made Oasis effective was the instant familiarity of their material, maybe too familiar. Supersonic contained a lyrical reference to a yellow submarine, and critics pointed out its guitar solo strongly echoed the playing of Beatles lead guitarist George Harrison.
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Hallelujah.
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Indeed. Oasis fealty to the Beatles became something of a running joke. There's even a gag in the 2019 Danny Boyle Richard Curtis film Yesterday that if the Beatles had never existed, neither would Oasis. Noel Gallagher made no secret of his Beatles fandom, and his songs were littered with unabashed references to Beatles songs like Tomorrow Never Knows, the Fool on the Hill and I Feel Fine.
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I'm so glad that she's my little girl she's so glad she's telling the whole world.
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But these are all lyrical references. My opinion the Beatles equals Oasis joke has been a bit overplayed. Musically, Oasis only occasionally sound Beatlesque. Lead singer Liam Gallagher's sneering vocal style sounds less like Lennon or McCartney and more like Johnny Rotten. And songwriter Noel Gallagher was a magpie who borrowed from lots of places. Oasis second single, for example Shaker Maker, a number 11 UK hit in the summer of 94, Lost a plagiarism claim for stealing its verse melody from the old folky era. Coca Cola jingle and New Seekers hit I'd like to Teach the World to Sing. Or Oasis fall 94 single the decadent strutting cigarettes and alcohol, a number seven UK hit. Was an obvious homage to T. Rex's glam classic Bang a Gong, Get it on. And the band's Christmas 94 single Whatever. Was forced to add to its songwriting credits the name Neil Innisfail innis, whose satirical 1973 song How Sweet To Be an Idiot was an obvious antecedent to Whatever. By the way, Neil Innes is perhaps best known for playing a faux John Lennon in the TV Beatles parody band the Ruddles, so even some of Oasis Beatles allusions were secondhand anyway. Most of these Oasis hits were found on the band's debut album Definitely maybe, which was an out of the box smash in Britain. Like Blur's Parklife, Definitely Maybe debuted at number one, fueled largely by its third single, the soaring anthem Live Forever. Oasis first UK top 10 hit, Live Forever was such an undeniable single it even did well in america, reaching number two on the modern rock chart in the winter of 1995 and even even cracking the top 40 at pop radio. Coincidentally, Live Forever rode the modern rock chart alongside the long awaited return of the Stone Roses. The Madchester veterans who after a protracted five year absence had reinvented themselves as a kind of blues rock combo for the age of Britpot. Though Love Spreads reached number two on the US Modern rock chart and number two on the UK pop chart, the Stone Roses comeback album Second Coming underperformed and the band found it could not live up to the hype of their own own rebirth. They would break up two years later. The changing of the guard from baggy to Brit pop was complete fairing. Much better in early 95 was Elastica, whose single Waking up became their biggest UK hit to date at number 13, After which the band finally issued a long awaited debut album, the self titled Elastica. Like Park Life and Definitely maybe before it entered the British album chart at number one. In fact, Elastica's opening sales eclipsed Definitely maybe as the fastest selling British debut album in history to that date. It even went gold in America, fueled by Elastica's number two modern rock hit Connection, Which in a bit of a Noel Gallagher like move, had borrowed its rhythmic hook from 70s art punk band Wire's Three Girl Rumba. Elastica's Justine Frischman did not deny the resemblance. Alongside all these perky Britpop hits, don't Dotting the British charts in the spring of 95, pulp returned with their most acclaimed and most acerbic single, titled Common People. Often credited as Britpop's finest hour, it frequently tops polls for the best British single of the era. Common People is a story song about a posh woman who tells the song's narrator that she wants to go slumming with working class folk like himself. In a bid for hipster empathy, Jarvis Cocker's lead character agrees to guide her through Common People life before savagely ripping into the woman's class tourism quote if you called your dad, he could stop it all. Jarvis Howells you'll never live like Common People. Common People was a British smash, peaking at number two in the summer of 95 and setting up Pulp's best selling album Different Class, which was filled with biting gems like the drug satire Sorted For Ease and Whiz.
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Oh yeah, the pirate radio told us what was going down.
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Got the tickets from some folks when it appeared later in 1995. Different class like the Blur, Oasis and Elastica albums before it entered the UK chart at number one, Different Class never charted in America, though Pitchfork magazine would later name it their number one Britpop album. For Brit pop fans, 1995 is remembered as the dizzying peak. Even before the year was half over, Blur's Damon Albarn and Elastica's Justine Frischman, who had been dating since the early 90s, became an object of Fleet street fascination. Brit Pop's it couple in those same tabloids and music weeklies, Blur and Oasis were billed as Britpop's prime rivalry, with bandleaders Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher obliging reporters with snarky jibes. Blur in particular were still basking in the sky. Stunning success of Park Life, which swept the 1995 Brit Awards, taking home Album of the Year among its four statuettes. The only question was how Blur and the other Brit pop bands would follow up their run of recent successes, and Noel Gallagher was not sitting on his laurels. He was already working on a new set of songs to ensure Oasis would conquer the world. When we come back, Blur and Oasis engage in an epic chart battle and Oasis successfully invades America, even as the Yanks remain blissfully ignorant of the Britpop wave. It would all end in tears, but not before filling stadiums. Non Slate plus listeners will hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited, and narrated by Chris Melanthe. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis, Derek Zhang is Executive Producer of Narrative Podcasts, and Alicia Montgomery is VP of Audio for Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com you can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. We'll see you for part two in a couple of weeks. Until until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanthe.