Brit What?

Blur vs Oasis. Damon 'n' Justine. Common People. It all seems so long ago, says Nicholas Barber. But has a new film about Britpop's demise got the story right?

For those of us who feel as if Britpop happened only yesterday, or last week at most, it's unnerving to learn that the producers of One Day In September have followed their Oscar-winning documentary with a film about a bunch of bands who hung around Camden in the mid-1990s – as if Blur, Oasis, Pulp, Elastica and co had assumed the historical significance of the 1972 Olympics. But it's happened. With the impending release of Live Forever, Britpop has been officially consigned to the past. For that matter, Britpop vanished so soon after the days of "Cool Britannia" that Live Forever starts to look like an ironic title. Even by the standards of music fads, the Britpop bubble popped quickly.

The reason for its brevity is the same as the reason for its success. As the term might suggest, Britpop had a lot to do with Britishness – singing, in an English accent, about chip shops and bank holidays, and being rudely awakened by the dustmen on a Wednesday. But it had at least as much to do with pop – a radical concept at the time. In the early 1990s, pop was something that New Kids On The Block did. Even Kylie Minogue was in that unfortunate phase when she disowned "I Should Be So Lucky" and tried to convince us that she was a cutting-edge singer-songwriter. Any band that took themselves at all seriously would categorise themselves as indie or rock or alternative or punk: this newspaper's popular music reviews were headed "Rock", not "Rock & Pop" as they are today.

But then, round about 1994, Britain's guitar bands began to see things differently. Their ambitions no longer peaked with a Peel session and a tour of the student union circuit; their idea of a show stretched beyond covering their faces with their fringes and keeping their eyes down on their effects pedals. While their direct forebears, the Smiths and the Stone Roses, were lucky to get a single in the UK top 10, the Britpack wanted to top the charts around the world. They wanted to be pop stars.

In practice, this meant applying a traditional indie band's guitar/bass/drums arrangements to lyrics you could hear and melodies you could sing along to. (Blur made a point of printing the chord changes in their lyric sheets, so you could play along, too.) And that, in turn, meant looking back to a period when bands could write their own songs, play their own instruments and still sell records to millions of screaming schoolgirls. The Britpack shamelessly pillaged the Beatles, the Kinks and the Small Faces, and with the input of such producers as Stephen Street, Chris Thomas and John Leckie, they reminded listeners of an era before there was a distinction between rock and pop.

The style of the music wasn't the only throwback to pop's golden era. The style in which it was presented was, too. Nowadays, the demands of international promotion will rarely let a band record more than one album every two or three years. But Blur, Oasis and Pulp were determined to keep pace with the fickle pop market. They all released excellent albums in 1994 and they all released excellent albums in 1995. That's still just half the rate of the Beatles back when London was first Swinging, but it gave Britpop a rare sense of momentum, especially when the gaps were filled by albums from other promising bands – Supergrass, Elastica, the Bluetones, Sleeper, Echobelly, Mansun. And when they weren't making music, the leaders of the Britpack were making headlines, again in ways reminiscent of the Sixties.

Oasis revived the ancient art of hotel room-smashing, and got embroiled in a good old-fashioned public feud with Blur. The public loved it. People who weren't interested in music knew the names of Britpop's main players. When singles by Blur and Oasis were released on the same day – a deliberate bit of spoiling by Blur's Damon Albarn – the tussle was reported on the Nine O'Clock News. Oasis's Noel and Liam Gallagher were turned into Spitting Image puppets. An Oasis cover band, No Way Sis, got a single in the chart, and an easy-listening revival act, the Mike Flowers Pops, reached number one with a lounge version of "Wonderwall". Britpop had a celebrity couple (Albarn and Justine Frischmann from Elastica), a pet charity (War Child), a supergroup (Me Me Me), and endorsements from its elders (Paul Weller and Ray Davies sang along with the Gallaghers and Albarn respectively). Everything from football coverage to a film about Edinburgh junkies had a Britpop soundtrack. The most talked-about artist in the country directed a Blur video. The dynamic new leader of the Labour party namechecked the groups. It felt as if the whole of British culture was taking its cue from the posters on a teenaged boy's wall during his first term at university. And when, during the 1996 Brit Awards, Jarvis Cocker hopped on stage to deflate Michael Jackson's megalomaniacal rendition of "Earth Song", the message was unmistakable: American pop royalty was deluded and embarrassing. Britannia was cool.

It didn't last. "I got what I wanted, I suppose, what I'd been after the majority of my life," says Cocker in Live Forever, "and then the actual reality of that were rubbish. You just realise that you've become a nobhead.

"You've lived your life up to a certain point, and then suddenly all that experience and life seems to not count for anything because you can't do them things any more. And yet the world that supposedly has now opened its doors to you – the celebrity club – just seems to be really shite. So my way of dealing with that situation was just to get as hammered as possible."

The documentary blames the demise of Britpop on several factors: drugs, the Spice Girls, Noel Gallagher's favourite politician attaining the decidedly uncool position of Prime Minister. A more basic explanation is that a union between pop and indie could only ever be an unstable one. Today's entertainment industry being far more corporate than it was in the Sixties, it involved too many sacrifices and compromises, children's TV appearances and paparazzi chases for people who specialised in sharp, personal songs about life on the dole. The Britpackers were indie kids at heart. They had been handed the keys to the palace, only to realise that they preferred the bedsit, after all. Elastica took five years and as many line-up changes to finish their second album, and Frischmann was already nostalgic for the old days: "What I want," she murmured, "is a room with a three-bar fire/ Like the one you had before/ When you were poor/ And I just liked you more."

Britpop's other leading lights were much more swift to alienate their younger fans. In 1997, Blur released a punky racket of an album influenced by the American alt-rockers, Pavement. Oasis released Be Here Now, on which every song was bloated by cocaine. As for Pulp, their 1998 follow up to Different Class was called This Is Hardcore, it had a porn model on the front cover, and it opened with Cocker informing us, "This is the sound of loneliness turned up to 10/ A horror soundtrack from a stagnant water-bed/ The sound of someone losing the plot." He retired to make a documentary about outsider art. Albarn scored films and discovered world music. Oasis broke up, then reunited, then broke up, then reunited again.

The next wave of guitar bands made it clear that they weren't pop stars. Travis, Coldplay, the Stereophonics, the Doves and Badly Drawn Boy are the shrinking violets to Britpop's tall poppies, insisting that their jobs begin and end with putting on jeans and sweatshirts and playing songs. Travis called their third album The Invisible Band to underline the point: parties, premieres, controversy and rivalry were best left to the professionals. And there was no shortage of professionals. In the post-Spice era of Pop Stars and Pop Idol, the status quo has been restored. Pop and indie have shaken hands and gone their separate ways again.

There's only one person who has the right combination of showbiz ambition and indie attitude to be called a Britpop artist. Chillingly, that person is Robbie Williams. Blur have just parted company with Graham Coxon, one of the most gifted guitarists of his generation. Oasis retain only two of the five members who recorded Definitely Maybe in 1994 – the Gallagher brothers. Pulp have announced that they have no plans to record together again. Several other bands associated with Britpop are still going – Supergrass and Suede, for instance – but are more intent on satisfying themselves and their fans than the wider public. And what of all the other Britpop hopefuls? What of Shed Seven and Salad, Kula Shaker and Cast, Placebo and Powder, Marion and Menswear? It turned out that they weren't pop stars or pop idols. They were indie bands all along.

'Live Forever' is released on 14 February

The anthems: a guide

Oasis "Cigarettes & Alcohol", October 1994

This number seven hit reflected the Gallagher brothers' love affair with booze and drugs: "Is it worth the aggravation/ To find yourself a job when there's nothing worth working for?/ It's a crazy situation/ But all I need are cigarettes and alcohol/ You can wait for a lifetime/ To spend your days in the sunshine/ You might as well do the white line/ Because when it comes on top/ You gotta make it happen"

Supergrass "Caught By The Fuzz", October 1994

First given away as a promotional souvenir at Supergrass gigs, this single was officially released when its writer, Gaz Coombes, was 18 years old: "Caught by the fuzz/ While I was still on the buzz/ In the back of the van/ With my head in my hands/ Just like a bad dream/ I was only fifteen/ If only my brother could be here now/ He'd get me out and sort me out all right/ I knew I should have stayed at home tonight"

Sleeper "Inbetweener", January 1995

Louise Wener's depiction of life in her native Ilford reached number 16: "He's not a prince, he's not a king/ She's not a work of art or anything/ It makes no sense, another year/ What kind of A-Z would get you here?"

Pulp "Common People", May 1995

Jarvis Cocker based this number two hit on his experiences at art college: "She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge/ She studied sculpture at St Martin's College/ That's where I/ Caught her eye/ She told me that her dad was loaded/ I said, 'In that case I'll have a rum and Coca-Cola'/ She said, 'Fine'..."

Blur "Country House", August 1995

The first single from The Great Escape beat rival Oasis's "Roll With It" to number one: "He lives in a house, a very big house in the country/ Watching afternoon repeats, and the food he eats, in the country/ He takes all manner of pills, and piles up analyst bills, in the country"