Are Kasabian Britpop?
Short Answer
No. Kasabian are not Britpop. They're what came after Britpop had collapsed, sobered up slightly, and swapped irony for lasers.
Long Answer
This Is Hardcore came out on 30 March 1998. It was the sound of Britpop realising the party was over. Jarvis staring down the barrel of fame, regret, and a very English kind of shame. It was dark, theatrical, sleazy, and brilliant. Britpop's final, breathless sigh.
6 years, 5 months, and 7 days later, Kasabian released their debut album. That’s not a cultural moment. That’s a generation shift. Enough time for an entire schoolchild to go from learning to read to learning to roll a joint in a field while “Club Foot” blasts from a Bluetooth speaker.
In 2,353 days, the entire landscape had shifted. Britpop’s chipper nostalgia was gone. So was the class war cosplay, the Kinks references, the wink and the sneer. Kasabian didn’t want to be Blur. They wanted to be chemical, cosmic, colossal. Less Camden. More cosmos. Less Suede. More swaggering synths and space-age stomp.
That gap is 3,390,720 minutes. In that time, music had absorbed garage rock, post-punk revivalism, and the dying embers of Big Beat. Kasabian took the attitude of Britpop, the arrogance, the strut, the refusal to be ignored, but they fed it through a different machine. One that spat out something heavier, hazier, and more interested in blowing up tents at Glastonbury than soundtracking life on a council estate.
So no, Kasabian are not Britpop. They are what happens 203,443,200 seconds after Britpop ended. A band born from the fallout, but built for a new kind of party. One where no one remembers the lyrics, but everyone knows when to jump.
