Britpop: The Music That Changed Britain, Sunday, 22.00, Channel 5

Thanks to the person on Twitter who pointed out the Hughie Green doc had a different name on screen than it did in the TV guides, we assume not because of our pedantry last week but just because that’s what this channel does. And indeed this series has a different, slightly less melodramatic title on screen – just “The Story of Britpop” – than what it says up there. Good fun, though, and we enjoyed the first part, enlivened by many illuminating contributions, not just from Alan McGee and half of Blur, as well as Stuart Maconie of course, but also people like Sice from The Boo Radleys and Nigel Clark from Dodgy who made some welcome comments and illustrates that the whole series isn’t just going to be Blur vs Oasis. This episode is, mind, as we look at its imperial phase. As we’ve said before, kids today must be baffled at the idea it getting on the news was such a big deal, as pop music is always on the news these days, but it really was, and as this programme discussed last week, one thing that was certainly different about Oasis was that after years of bands saying they made music for themselves and if anyone else liked it that was a bonus, here was a credible band that wanted to be on Top of the Pops every week and sell millions of records. That did of course lead to some rather tedious tabloid business and everyone who drank in The Good Mixer getting a record deal, but it was quite exciting in the moment and for the first time in a long time the indie chart became the real chart and, like in the early eighties, all kinds of unlikely figures who had been ligging around the arse end of the industry for ages became genuine pop stars. We’ll hear from some of them tonight.






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