Blur Vs Oasis and my nerdiest teenage crush

Just 23 short years ago, Britain was a nation at war with itself in a much more jolly and musical manner than it is today.

In the summer of 1996 Britpop was split asunder as two (gently) warring factions, armed with nothing more than swear-words and pints of Boddingtons, argued about which was the greatest (white, male, guitar-based) band of the moment.

Blur moved the release date of their single ‘Country House’ to coincide with Oasis’s ‘Roll With It’ and the Battle of Britpop was on.

Ahhh, chart battles. They were a thing.

I had always been team Oasis. The sonic wall of ‘Definitely Maybe’ had soundtracked pretty much every moment of my life that wasn’t soundtracked by Green Day for the last two years. I’d never fully grasped Blur, a band listened to on C90s at friend’s houses. They seemed very clever-clever and buttoned up in the same way Pulp were. Not really my bag, I liked my music gutsy rather than think-y. I had no interest in twee-sounding middle eights and poncy things like codas.

But then something happened. I jumped ship.

Oasis to Blur. Northern to Southern. Working class to posh cockney. And why?

Teenage hormones.

I developed an inexplicable lust — not for Damon, not for Alex –but for Graham Coxon.

The publicity push for the Great Escape landed Coxon in all the magazines I was reading. I fell in love with his breton-t-shirts, thick-rimmed glasses and auterishness the way other teenage girls fell in love with the billowing shirts and boyish good looks of Ronan Keating. Who needs a squeaky clean boy-bander when you can have a grumpy alcoholic nerd in glasses! Wahey!

I am so ashamed to admit it, but I was suckered. All those years of spurning Take That and East 17 and burying myself in Crowded House records like a middle-aged person, and finally my lusty teenager-ness won out. The fanjo trumped the ears. I became just another dumb girl choosing totty over taste.

(Side note that the derision of ‘fangirls’ is, of course, entirely problematic and driven by good old misogyny. It is a construct I bought into entirely in my teens and beyond. No wonder women are so good at going around hating and doubting themselves. This article explores it well.)

So I bought ‘Country House’, not ‘Roll With It’. I bought ‘The Great Escape’ with my hard-earned pocket money and taped ‘What’s The Story’ off Lisa in my tutor group.

No longer was I an Oasis diehard (let’s face it, ‘Roll With It’ was a bit of a nothing song) I was a Blur girl. I bought the single ‘Country House’ — which was OK at best. Then I bought the album ‘The Great Escape’ — probably the worst record Blur ever released — and force myself to listen to it until I liked it.

Then I bought the guitar tab book and learned to play everything in it.

And that’s really where the only saving grace of this slightly embarrassing story lies.

Because I started listening to Coxon (it upsets me to think he was possibly a total wanker, but teenage love is blind), I started to pay more attention to the bands that influenced him — mostly US indie like Tortoise, Pavement and Slint. Stretching my mood-ringed fingers around angular guitar lines of songs like ‘Stereotypes’, I started to see a different way to play. I began to step back from the dunderheaded power chords of my beloved punk and start to absorb myself in an altogether more discordant world. Pretty soon after this I dropped Britpop altogether, totally disillusioned by the coke-bloated horror it had become, and started looking for my music in more interesting places.

Later on I had a boyfriend who looked pretty much exactly like my beloved Graham, right down to the bead necklace and charity shop t-shirts. In an ironic twist, we would lie around in his flat and I would play him Yo La Tengo records. Occasionally I’d drag him to weird gigs which were invariably too noisy for him. I felt like I’d come full circle.

‘Country House’ won the Battle of Britpop, but Oasis are largely agreed to have “won the war”, although I’m not sure anyone can really remember why. Damon and Noel are supposed to be mates these days, although Damon claims they rarely talk about their past.

Coxon’s doing pretty well in his solo career too. He most recently soundtracked the really very excellent TV show ‘The End of the F**king World’. If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it.

Perhaps I landed on my feet by fancying him so completely as a teenager.

I’m not sure Keanu taught me quite as many neat riffs.

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I’m Penny, a freelance writer and content strategist. My #write52 theme is ‘number ones in this week’, which is proving to be partly restrictive and partly wonderful. You can listen to me talking about other stuff on Twitter here and on Instagram here.