Uncommon People

When Miranda Sawyer interviewed Liam Gallagher in 1994, his gag wishing Damon Albarn would die of AIDS became front-page news all over the world. This fascinating pop history, exploring the moment British music suddenly meant everything, explains why. Picking out twenty key songs, delving into the surprising stories behind them and their unlikely creators, UNCOMMON PEOPLE takes us back to when Jarvis Cocker became a national hero, films like Trainspotting were international hits, rave became what everybody did – and it felt like the revolution was happening.

Initially a mocking tabloid nickname, Britpop became an unexpected musical movement created by squatters, activists, students and kids barely out of school and their songs have proved timeless. Exploring the era’s most definitive anthems – Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Manic Street Preachers, Suede, Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack, Garbage, Supergrass, Radiohead, Underworld, PJ Harvey, The Prodigy and more – Miranda Sawyer transports us back to the beating heart of the nineties, to relive the mad exhilaration of what it was like to hear these songs for the very first time – and what it was like to make them. Based on amazing new interviews with the leading figures, this book offers a backstage pass to all the most interesting bits of Britpop’s Greatest Hits.

Forget New Labour, forget earnest theories about trends, this book is all about the music, the people and being right there, right now.