CAME of age during Britpop? Can’t hear those classic songs without flashing back to a moment of buttock-clenching shame? These are the memories they evoke:
Oasis, Cigarettes & Alcohol (1994): Being a teenage smartarse
Key track which reminds you what a wanker you were at family parties. It was New Year, all you had to do was be nice to Granny, but you sang this loudly to inform those gathered you’d been on the booze and snouts the night before. Still, take comfort from the fact that Liam Gallagher’s still that much of an arsehole now.
Suede, Animal Nitrate (1993): Losing your virginity
Losing your virginity to the sound of Brett Anderson’s histrionics was endemic to the era. We thought it was ‘sexy’. Even if you didn’t, this painfully epic track reminds you of your earliest shags. Hard to say which is more embarrassing: your inept, heavy-handed attempts at clitoral stimulation or the pun of the title.
Blur, Girls & Boys (1994): Bad fashion choices
It was so exciting, leaving school and being finally free to express your individuality by wearing the same lad fashions as everyone else: art-school mockney Damon’s Adidas tracksuit tops, Oasis’s football shirts, and terrace fashions like Ben Sherman and Tacchini that screamed ‘middle-class wanker’ on you.
Sleeper, Inbetweener (1995): Unrequited love
You loved him so much, that boy who’s fat and bald on Facebook now. You went through so much performative misery and penned so many rancid poems of devotion. You wished you could be like the female-fronted bands who were so cool and casual with their shags. And when you weren’t 17 any more, you were.
Elastica, Stutter (1993): Self-inflicted A-level grief
What a twat you were, not revising, believing two Es and a U would make you a tragic hero whose potential the world would mourn while you worked in Asda, girls weeping as you died alone. Or maybe you genuinely hadn’t done enough work and were now watching the clock tick down to failure with no chance of catching up. Dickhead.
Primal Scream, Rocks (1994): Incompetent drug-taking
Primal Scream liked their drugs and were better at taking them than you. Your own attempts at getting higher than the sun were fraught with humiliation: badly-rolled joints, ripped off for £15 a pill on Junior Disprin E, pretending to be vibing to the music while your bowels clenched. It’s put you off recreational substances for life.
Pulp, Common People (1995): Futile nights out
You know all the lyrics. You heard it every sodding time you went out. And you went out a lot, hoping for a cool Britpop night out like in Camden’s The Good Mixer, necking snakebite-and-black, vomiting purple, never getting a shag. Going out with the hateful posh girl in the song would have been preferable. She considered Tesco a date.
