The British music scene has always operated at warp speed...songs and bands and sounds have always come and gone very quickly, even before the age of the internet...

This is what happens when you have a lot of people crammed onto an island linked together by a huge and obsequious national broadcasting network and goaded by a hyper-competitive music press...

But every once in a while–maybe once a decade–something sticks...a movement takes root, grows organically and then suddenly explodes to the point where everyone is talking about it...it even goes international with its songs and sounds and fashion and politics..

In the 60s, it was the British invasion, led by the Beatles and the Stones...in the 70s, it was the British spin on punk rock with the Pistols and the Clash...the 80s began with all those telegenic British bands on MTV which set off the music video revolution...and in the 90s–well, that’s where it gets a bit complicated...

Not complicated in a bad way...i mean in an interesting way...it was an explosion of pride in British-ness that we hadn’t really seen since February 7, 1964, when Pan Am flight 101 from London landed at JFK airport in New York carrying a band called the Beatles...

This is chapter 12 of the complete history of alt-rock–and it’s all about the thing they called “Britpop”...

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