The nicest man in Britpop, according to Damon Albarn: “Really sweet”
When I recently interviewed Shaun Ryder for Far Out, it didn’t take long for the interview to descend into some form of light-hearted chaos.
Here I was, a music journalist who had spent most of his adolescence flicking back through the history books of great music, regularly bookmarking the Britpop chapter as one of my most beloved, talking to a bastion of the era. While I would try to spiritually transport myself to the Madchester movement through Happy Mondays records, the reality of it still felt so very distant.
I wondered, as I waited for Ryder to pick up the phone for our interview, whether the conversation would be similar. Whether this icon of a time gone by would be aloof, inaccessible and at worst, misrepresentative of a culture I romanticized. But with a swift “sorry I’m fucking late, mate” from Ryder’s heavy Salford accent upon receipt of the call, I realised I needn’t have feared about being underwhelmed.
In 2025, despite everything life had thrown at him, Ryder was still as colourful as the records he featured on. He was animated in his anecdotes and earnest during mine, accepting my invitation to turn this more into a conversation than an interview. Because once the formalities were out of the way, he was keen to indulge in whatever tangent we both felt necessary, whether it was John Cale, squat raves in Bristol or his recent trip to see Oasis.
It was clear to see that Ryder’s enthusiasm to just simply engage with me and my conversation wasn’t an act, rather a natural state of being. And for all the greatness of the Britpop era, it’s not hard to imagine that humility and courtesy fell by the wayside. Nevertheless, Ryder seemed to have it and whether it was just reserved for those encountering him during a mellow period of his life, like myself, was up for debate.
But Damon Albarn expressed the sort of admiration for Ryder that would imply, his earnestness has been a longstanding quality. He said, “I love Shaun Ryder. During the whole Oasis thing, he and Bernard Sumner were the only two who cared about what I was going through.”
Adding, “Being constantly taken the piss out of by [the Gallaghers]. How can you fight when you’ve got the tabloids and a working class attitude on your back? You’re fucked. But Shaun was really sweet to me and made me feel a whole lot better about it. Because I did get quite upset about it.”
Clearly Albarn never forgot the kindness Ryder showed him during those heady days of Britpop. But he felt as though he needed to offer more than just a simple thank you and so seized his opportunity to extend his thanks to Ryder through music.
