Is the Britpop really returning?

After the Brat Summer2024, summer 2025 is that of Britpop. For the set of values – last year it was the revenge of the confused and happy girls, with self -irony – we are equipping ourselves and it is not said that they will arrive (feeling masters of the world? Who knows), but in the meantime the English music of the nineties has returned to dictate law. Above all, the reunion tour of the Oasisdegenerated in collective hysteria even more than he had done at the time of the announcements last August, revitalizing The myth of the Gallagher brothers and of the age of the repertoire, between Defintely Maybe (1994) e (What’s the story) Morning Glory? (1995). Not only that: to open the live there is Richard Ashcroft, the leader of the verve, the group to whom the two had dedicated the song Cast No Shadow when it was misunderstood, but that with Bitter Sweet Symphony (1997) He will mark the peak of the season and that here, here, it seems again to the fold. And again, The return of the suede and even of Robbie Williams, with an unpublished album entitled not by chance … Britpop.

It is not to be surprised if these names are different from each other, as in the case of Williams himself, who in the biographical film Better Man dedicates a scene to what the Oasis, from young people, did not consider it a true artist – now The combat ax seems buried In general, the Gallagher are less interested in picconare anyone and even Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz, the rival of all time, at least for the British press) admitted that the two won the war, but Amen.

The fact is that, More than a genre, the Britpop was a movement, a feeling. Of course, in the center there was music: with the death of Kurt Cobain and the end of the Nirvana (April 1994), the geographical epicenter of world music had moved from Seattle, the United States, which dominated with the grunge without problems, again in the United Kingdom, with an ascent indie-rock groups as precisely Blur, Pulp and the Oasis themselves. But the changing of the guard in the Mainstream pop, with the Spice Girls, Take That and Williams’ solo career should not be underestimated. As well as football – great social architrave of the country, but with us – and politics.

The English eighties, in fact, had been a tremendous eragray, with Thatcher and the infinite controversies as prime minister and the violence of the Hooligan in the stadiums, which will lead to the tragedy of Heysel (39 Juventusians killed by the charges of the Liverpool fans, we are in 1985) and to the exclusion from the European cups of his majesty teams, with an obvious decline of the local championship. Ten years later, full Britpop, the premier is the most dynamic (at least for the standards of that time) Tony Blair, the British themselves joke about their national team in view of the 1996 European Championships (It’s coming homethey will not win) and football relaunches with a championship with great investors, the Premier League that still thrives today, and an updated star system, led by David Beckham himself. In short, England, even the most workers like the Gallagher Manchester, or the degraded Scotland of a Trainspottingperhaps the cult film of that generation, becomes The place to beeveryone wants to be English – Or almost, because the movement will always make a huge effort to break through in the United States.

Clear, they were other times. There were no social networksthe world lived with televisions, newspapers, magazines and various correspondences: we were really more naive. Maybe it was also a better place, but now with the hammering of stories and more we have convinced ourselves that the promised land does not exist, and that everywhere we turn, oriente or west that it is, the problems remain – the United States, in some ways, are worse than us. And perhaps it is also why the Britpop revival, for now, is mostly nostalgic – including those who, then, was not there – and linked to the aesthetic aspect of Union Jack anywhere and Parka à la Liam Gallagher. In these years The myth, especially in Europe, grew upjust think of the themed evenings, and it does not stop fascinating: you want because, for many, it is the last season in which there was a promised land, or you want because that promised land was two hours by plane, again because, simply, for the last time, however, an alternative music took the scene, a music that today, Oasis in the first place, sounds familiar.

There is a point, however, that it is missing in all this and that makes you say that yes, ok, the Britpop has returned, but only as a concept from the past, nothing else. And that is: The songs, today, go somewhere else. If in the nineties, in fact, the beating heart of the world scene was there, now it is elsewhere. There are no English groups that have collected the legacy, even if only media, of the Spice Girls and Oasis, imagine the guitars of the Gallagher brothers. Indeed, the theme is this: Is there a return, in general, even just rock? It looks not, not at all. There is no someone who wants to try to write like Oasis today, there is no worldwide, Imagine in Italy, where even at the time in the face of the enormous success of the originals the emulations had been minimal: Daniele Groff, for those who remember it, was the response to the movement, which lasted a little; Sottracce and without ever being really said, the Lùnapops were a nice Britpop band (or at least, Something big And A better day They were Oasis -style pieces, after all Cremonini also paid them to pay them on the tour of this summer, with a cover). Also in the current revival, little stuff: gazelle even if more from aesthetics than in substance; and Coez, who published in June 1998album in the Britpop shadow cone, but not too much. In short, if there Brat Summer At least he had put a new trend on the plate here, for now, we are stopped at the pole. But who knows that something new does not move for September.