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The Drawn-Out Battle of the '90s Brit-Pop Superstars

CHRIS: But what comes off as glorious effect on Blur’s albums comes through the traipsing over generations of important British rock preceding them: you must remember that when a band so ostentatiously channels John and Paul’s heart and soul, or Jagger’s swagger, they are implicitly placing themselves among these influences, and as a result most bands don’t dare to reach back in such earnest.

Blur recognizes that the stylistic flow of ’90s rock is one that celebrates and explores the ironies of musical history—not surprising for a decade lit off by the perverse cheerleaders of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The guitar-rock that Oasis so convincingly emulates frequently clung to a set of themes about pastoral English life, reflected in such songs as the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” or “Penny Lane,” and the Kink’s magnum opus The Village Green Preservation Society.

It is this tradition that Blur subverts in their music and artwork: their albums are sketches of British life, celebrating all of it, from Prozac-popping country house dwellers to rudely awakened pigeon-feeders, and for all of life’s pleasantry and dark side. This all runs conceptual loops around Oasis’s retreads of pieces about love, and it all occurs under a penumbra of sonic innovation—the range of styles the band touches on is incredible, incorporating the best parts of guitar-pop, two-tone ska, and the early shoegazing sound that characterized their debut, Leisure.

I don’t disagree that Oasis’ albums are well-produced, but better produced (or with a better music video) than “Coffee and TV”? When Blur wants to shoot for that sound, as on this stand-out, they succeed with flying colors. But, for the most part, this isn’t what they’re after—rather than accept themselves as heirs of British rock, they explore just what it means to be a British rocker, and even just to be British, and these level of inquiry and musical introspectiveness I just find completely absent in the pleasant but not ultimately intellectually engaging music of their Manchester peers.

DREW: Kukstis, tell me you’re kidding when you say that any band which channels a past master has to be compared to the original. That’s (to borrow from the Brits again) bollocks, and it’s bollocks of the most elitist kind.

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Even when bands are much more explicit “redos” of classic groups than Oasis is—The Strokes, for example—that doesn’t mean that they’re poor because of their thieving. Sure, it’s not often a formula for success, but when it works—and you seem to admit it works for the Gallaghers and Co.—it works wonders, and has the all-too-thrilling effect of forcing the listener’s ear to reinvestigate the sounds that made the originals so fresh and gripping.

Revision and renormalization are legitimate parts of artistic production—the artistic discourse, if you like—and I don’t see how your meta-claim that Blur was both aware of and subverting the ironic ethos of ’90s grunge makes that band any more effective. Introspection doesn’t have to be overt; not everybody can (or should) be Thom Yorke, and just because “Song 2” is an ironic song about irony doesn’t mean that Blur is any more interested in analyzing its place in pop music history than Oasis. It also doesn’t mean they’re more suited to do so.

As for explicit subject material, I heartily reject the claim that Oasis is wallowing in British pastoralism—“She’s Electric,” “Married with Children,” and a handful of others fit the bill, but overwhelmingly the semi-cryptic lyrics of the Oasis canon point in the opposite direction: “Tonight, I’m a rock and roll star,” Liam sneers in the chorus of “Rock and Roll Star” (there’s a title Blur would never be as confidently arrogant to use), and there can be no confusing that level of grandeur with provincialism.

Concept and intellectualism can be great, but they don’t directly correlate with quality, and for what it’s worth, they’re a pretty recent addition to what rock and roll was originally all about.

Moreover, I think you’re going to have a lot of trouble finding good bands if love is a taboo lyrical topic—this is a pretty enduring one, and I don’t think it’s unfair for a band like Oasis whose self-admitted mission is to reinvent a genre for the modern era (and I mean era) to occasionally use a subject which was absolutely fundamental to that original genre’s ethos, and which determined a lot of the aural vocabulary still in play today.

Look, I like “Coffee and TV,” and I like a lot of Blur when it reaches for those heights, but fact is, they didn’t those heights that often, and they haven’t hit those heights in a long time. Of course, Oasis has made enough crap, especially recently, that I’ll admit they’re also pretty much done. Which is probably why we should both just drop this debate over two Manchester bands and agree that Oxford’s Radiohead is better than either.

CHRIS: Not to agree with your last word after dissenting for so long, but I think I find your final suggestion acceptable.

—Staff writer Christopher A. Kukstis can be reached at kukstis@fas.harvard.edu

—Columnist Drew C. Ashwood can be reached at ashwood@fas.harvard.edu

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