This is such a great look into the world of Brit Pop. I quite enjoyed it and will def be recommending to music fans at the library as something to give a try.

A really different look at the Britpop era told from the authors perspective. I really enjoyed it and found myself really reminiscing throughout

This is, as the early words of the author prove, a blatantly personal look back at Britpop and what it sounded like and what having it in our country and in a man's life might have meant and left behind. It's author is certainly not one to pull any shots – he leaves no doubt he thought grunge tuneless garbage, he pulls back from mentioning, then mentions, teenaged depression more than once – heck, he outs himself as far left before the pages have even dropped the Latin numerals before we've really begun.

His opinions about Britpop music are no less forthright, declaring "Parklife" to be "so dreadful that it makes Mr Blobby sound like 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' by comparison", even though it winning the race to #1 is clearly A Good Thing. Something "...is fine if you like The Fall and hate songs with actual tunes".

As regards the man's style, well, it's as in your face as, well, 808 State's "In Your Face". Every opportunity he gets he takes a run up at describing a song in a way that makes you remember alliteration went out of style in secondary school. Something is "a frantic, frenzied, frenetic, flash of energy", or it's "a bouncy, buoyant, bubbly, blast and blitz of art-school bop" (Oxford commas courtesy the author). But the man and his style are very closely linked – this is someone who stole a kiss from Justine Elastica, and thought she was a "famous person" and a "pop star" because she and her colleagues had had a solitary single out – for about ten days. This is a person who hates the insta-fame and uniformity of TV talent shows yet soaks up the great levels of individuality they find when believing NME's verbiage about Suede being the best band in Britain, or whatever the risible claim was. This is a man who openly admits to using Bing.

So yes, this is someone who seems to clamour for hyperbole and doesn't imagine it might get in the way of a good argument. Towards the end he lists a track as having "attitude, wardrobe, hair and melodies" and you are sure long before then that this may well be his musical wish-list, in order. It never was mine, which is why, despite me living a kid of parallel world to this author – I remember the shrug of disappointment from the people on the same course as I when, having to choose budget-wise between Inspiral Carpets and the "Modern Life is Rubbish" tour, I went to the former that week and not to Blur – our tastes don't really gel here.

And I guess that's why I find myself reading a little catty in this write-up, for the possible reason he is so impassioned, about things I could never be so impassioned about. Some of these bands I'd certainly never heard of; here is he protesting that they should have been #1 ever since they first came out. But either way, what I found was flawed – this is really quite repetitive, and in mentioning a detail or location then being coy about it afterwards, reads like a spread of blog posts turned into a book. His style can certainly rankle, however much kinship you have with the author – he also likes quoting song titles and lyrics as part of his narrative.

Yet, for all the negativity I offer, the book certainly seems to succeed in doing what it wants to do. It does marry the lonesome Scot and his social desolation with the lyrics that may have saved his life. It is a love letter to his constant companions, from a time when he had too few human ones. He lives and breathes this music still, to the extent we get the aforementioned quotes, and in not being encyclopaedic (or even in narrative order) he brings this off the music shelf and into memoir, showing us a young man engaging with what was for him a most formative season in pop history. The title blatantly ignores the fact Britpop dies, yet on pages like these that do mention its passing, it still seems to have a beating heart. He is the resurrection, perhaps. Three and a half stars, partly because I had to come up with some rating or other.

It's an informative and compelling book, a good introduction to Britpop and the most influential book.
I appreciated the style of writing and found it well written.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Incredibly nostalgic.
Enjoyed this book a lot!
Obviously it was biased toward the author Paul Laird and not everything (in my opinion) was mentioned that should have been - but I really enjoyed it nevertheless!
Liked the nostalgic element.

Always interesting to read books with an insight into those ground breaking music times, not sure that the author wrote from an unbiased perspective tho

I really did enjoy this book having been 8 right in the Brit pop heyday I lot my knowledge was in retrospect and my love of the music was found long after so it was it interesting to hear a personal perspective of the time.
Parts of the book felt like a little of vanity project but it did not take away telling the story of a truly brilliant time in British culture, for me and I think the author feels the same there is not a better time in British history in terms of youth voice and music. Something that has lasted a longer than other so called youth “fads”

Loved the artwork in the book, was real nice touch.

Currently listening to she bangs the drums while writing this wishing as I often to do that I had been older in the 90’s to enjoy it first hand rather than being a watcher from a far in my spice girl tee.

Be here now and then with this book, for fans who lived it and fans from later generations who long to have been there

The history of Britpop may seem like a well worn topic these days, but Paul Laird's book provides a welcome new perspective. This is partly because of his unusual, strongly held opinions: he hates grunge band.Nirvana, rejects any suggestion that there was a jingoistic element to.the Britpop movement and even attempts to argue that Oasis were not really a Britpop group at all. But he also moves beyond the usual suspects of Blur,.Pulp and Sleeper to shed more welcome light on minor players like Gene, Echobelly and Lick.
"Great Things?" Well, certainly "Alright'.

This ARC was provided to me via Kindle, Pen & Sword and by #NetGalley. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

It was more a memoir than a history of Britpop, still interesting.

This is the authors journey with what was coined Britpop with the music of the early 1990's as he describes his relationship with Blur, Oasis and some of the other bands, yes it is subjective but isn't all music though and did enjoy it overall as bought back memories for me of some of the bands in their early days.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Pen & Sword, White Owl for an advanced copy of this music history and cultural study on Britpop and fandom.

Songs have a power over people. The same song can make people mad, make people glad, and make people dance. A song can remind of childhood, bad schooldays, worse love affairs, even lost pets. Mothers want a particular song for giving birth, couples have their song, and at the end of things people get played out by a song, either sung or just read. Growing up I discovered music late, AM music was my family's jam, but when I found songs that spoke to me, I wanted more. Writer and podcaster Paul Laird felt the same way about music that I did, but his was Britpop, and it made his childhood not just bearable, but survivable. In The Birth and Impact of Britpop: Mis-Shapes, Scenesters and Insatiable Ones writes about the music that flooded the airwaves in the nineties, on both sides of the ocean, and what those songs meant for him.

Paul Laird was young, less than middle class and religious which made him a bit of an outsider in many ways. Needing something, anything to make his own, that spoke to him he found a friend, a companion and a love in music. Not just music but Britpop, songs that sang to him, songs that make him feel that someone was getting him, and songs that he couldn't get enough of. The author worked fast food for money to keep up with bands, reading New Music Express, buying singles, even listening to people he didn't like to finds bands. And here he writes about them. All the major bands are covered, Blue, Oasis, Pulp, Suede, with biographies, discussions of songs, music, influences, if they took off, if they crashed to the earth. But mostly about what he thought of them, and how they made him feel.

The book is well written and balanced between bands. The author has is favorites, but this is not history of the scene, nor a guide to great music of the nineties. This is a personal book about a boy, with a soundtrack. As I wrote a lot of bands are covered, even bands that I was unfamiliar with, but living in America in the 90's music info came from MTV, or the cool CD shops that had imports. I really enjoyed the way he presented the bands, and how he wrote about various issues that were present in the scene, sexism being a big thing, and what he thought about it.

I very different music book, which I enjoyed quite a bit. This was personal writing about songs, and feeling like an outsider in your own country, and how music helped. And I got a list of bands that I never heard of, but if Paul Laird likes them well I will for sure give them a listen.

I received an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review

This book is unique in that it more about the author's experience of Britpop as a teenager finding himself through music than an objective report or a testimony and quotes from the music industry. It speaks to what Britpop meant for it's young fans- with the idea that the rest has already been written. Enjoyable for what it is,