What killed Britpop?
Short Answer
Death by a thousand cuts. Some delivered by the bands themselves. Some by the culture around them. None quick. All fatal.
Long Answer
Britpop didn’t explode. It eroded. What started as a scrappy burst of energy slowly dissolved under the weight of its own success. Here’s the actual timeline of how it died.
Step by sorry step.
Knebworth (August 1996)
Oasis at their peak. 250,000 people across two nights. The moment it stopped being music and started being mythology. You don’t come back from that kind of climax.Radiohead – OK Computer (June 1997)
A masterpiece with no time for retro swagger or cheeky choruses. While Britpop was still trading on nostalgia, Radiohead dropped a cold, brilliant future in its lap. Suddenly, sounding British wasn’t enough.Oasis – Be Here Now (August 1997)
Three months later, Oasis answered with a cocaine bloated mess. It sold like hot cakes. Then it sat, heavy and unplayed, in CD towers across the country. Proof that the formula had run dry.Princess Diana’s Death (August 1997)
Two weeks later, everything changed. The nation mourned. Irony vanished overnight. Britpop’s wink and sneer felt suddenly out of place. No one was in the mood for Union Jack guitars and laddish anthems.Pulp – This Is Hardcore (March 1998)
Jarvis saw it coming. His follow-up to Different Class wasn’t a celebration. It was a reckoning. Fame, sleaze, age, regret — all delivered with dead-eyed brilliance. Britpop’s final great album, and its obituary.
The Verdict
Britpop died because it finished what it started. It climbed too high, got too pleased with itself, and stopped speaking to the people it was meant to represent. While the world moved forward, it stayed in the pub, grinning. And by the time it looked up, no one was listening.
