Is there anything left to say about Britpop? Well, based on Miranda Sawyer’s Uncommon People (Britpop and Beyond in 20 songs), yes, there is. Smartly it’s not a linear history treading a well-worn path, but a chapter-by-chapter review of a favourite Britpop song which develops into a potted history of the best-known bands and singer songwriters during Britpop and how they managed to survive (and sometimes prosper) without imploding. For many in those mad years the pressure was immense as the tabloids and seemingly everyone else in Great Britain suddenly became very interested in British pop: the zenith or nadir of those years, depending on your point of view, Blur vs Oasis, like pop was suddenly, God forbid, a football or boxing match. Britpop’s latent laddishness exploding into something truly preposterous. Miranda Sawyer charts her way through these various highs and lows with a deft touch that both avoids some of the eras worst cliches and is genuinely revealing, the brilliant chapters on Tricky’s Aftermath, Prodigy’s Firestarter, Cornershop’s Brimful of Asha and Underworld’s Born Slippy cases in point – but, in fact, every chapter is laced with new insights, memories and great stories. Which I think may even have surprised the author as she says, at one point, she had, “certain assumptions…that were often a bit cynical and dismissive…still, I knew that the cliched version of that time was wrong”. And she proves it on page after page of this lovely book. Uncommon people? I should coco.

Uncommon People: Britpop and Beyond in 20 Songs by Miranda Sawyer – Publ. by John Murray, £12.99

Steven Long