Sorry Supergrass, ‘Alright’ is the worst anthem of the ’90s Britpop era
You know that one song that you just irrationally hate for no good reason? Sorry, Supergrass, you’ve drawn the short straw on that front.
But I cannot ignore my truth: I absolutely hate ‘Alright’, and believe it to be the worst anthem of the Britpop generation. I mean, Oasis and Blur were too busy fighting all the time, so they can’t be considered to be any real form of competition. Jangly melodies, rom-com soundtracks and teen spirits? Please, pass my beer.
To me, it completely defies convention of everything else that Britpop ever was. The image we know and love is of full-throttle rock and roll, pub fights, big egos, and a defiant streak to champion the cause of the everyman. Somehow, that doesn’t quite seem to line up with a bunch of kids discussing how clean their teeth are.
The song has always felt like an outlier in that respect. Sure, you could argue that this is the point that makes it precisely the heart of Britpop, steering in its own lane and fighting for the underdog, and yet, it just comes across as too childish to be taken seriously. They were young, and they certainly were free, but they were also barely overage.
When ‘Alright’ was released in 1995, it represented the height of a genre that was practically tripping over itself for more. Definitely Maybe had been released the previous year, serving as a new testament in redefining what rock and pop could really be. Elsewhere, Blur had also been tearing up the rulebook with Parklife and The Great Escape, and Pulp were exploring a slice of life on ‘Common People’.
In fact, that song seems to be a particularly resonant landing point in the context of ‘Alright’, given how a shared, similar subject matter could yield such different results. To all intents and purposes, ‘Common People’ was also a teen anthem, as they were students at St Martin’s College, but there was something about that track that just proved all the more intoxicating.
It was the hedonistic, whirling whimsy of youth that made, and still makes, the Pulp anthem such a rush. It was naivety writ large, but also the striking acknowledgement of realism in a less than picture-perfect world: the grime and spiders crawling up the walls knew that better than most would.
Anyway, I digress; you could say that the position of Supergrass’ ‘Alright’ is more like the wealthy Greek girl in that aforementioned instance, but that still doesn’t even come close to getting to the nub of what makes the song so grating and unwelcome as a supposedly integral part of the Britpop canon.
Of course, it goes without saying that the rest of the Britpop back catalogue was far from downbeat. Yet, despite all its euphoria and unbridled moments of celebration, there tended to be an undercurrent which sat beneath it all. An anger, a tension, a statement that having a good time was actually an act of rebellion, given how persistently the world tried to bog the masses down.
Yet even the seemingly darkest refrain of ‘Alright’, in which the narrator, singing, “Got some cash, bought some wheels/ Took it out ‘cross the fields/ Lost control, hit a wall/ But we’re alright”, doesn’t manage to capture that covertly raging spark. It simply felt like the then-19-year-old frontman of Supergrass, Gaz Coombes, was still mentally in the bedroom of his childhood home, posters of his rock and roll heroes adorning the walls.
Naturally, it doesn’t escape me that all of this is, indeed, the point of ‘Alright’. But its janglyness and superficiality have always served as nails on a chalkboard to me in terms of what we know Britpop to be. It was not all about naive kids living out their halcyon days; to an extent, that came a decade later with indie sleaze.
Britpop was obviously steered by young people, but they were figures who seemed worldly-wise and possessed a wrath and ire towards society that was often beyond their years. By comparison, what was ‘Alright’? The manifestation of a bubble, before the bullies would come along to pop it. Sorry, Supergrass, I say again, but that was the worst anthem of the Britpop era.
