This book is Blur-dy great. It (Oas)is certainly not a load of Garbage; in fact it’s Super(grass) and I hope my review will per-Suede you to read it!

Miranda Sawyer was a music journalist in the 90s and she spent a lot of time with bands; interviewing, hanging out, watching gigs and at festivals. She therefore brings a personal perspective to the characters and the music. The writing style is entertaining and evocative. She chose 20 songs and for each chapter, she writes about the band, with particular focus on that song. The key word from the title is ‘beyond’, because although there are the usual suspects, it includes some you might not immediately consider as Britpop, such as PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Underworld and Tricky. Britpop, it transpires, doesn’t mean much at all. Even the most famous bands associated with it did not call themselves Britpop, so it was really a convenient term for the media to use. The book celebrates the years when indie rock and pop music by British (or Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish) groups dominated the charts and the papers. It’s not an exhaustive account of the era and is selective about the groups (for a more comprehensive survey, read I Was Britpopped, and for a wider context, read Don’t Look Back in Anger). I think it’s most valuable for its discussion of women in music, in the context of the magazine culture of the time.

Published by John Murray, 2024.

Not to be confused with Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars by David Hepworth.