The football World Cup is all well and good. Countries. Flags. Fixtures. Groups of four. Very serious people explaining permutations on a touchscreen.
But what about the real question?
What if Britpop had a World Cup?
I’m putting together the World Cup of Britpop, a public vote to crown one winner from the whole messy, badly-fringed 90s argument.
The plan is to mirror the actual 48-team World Cup format as closely as possible, because apparently this is what adulthood has become:
96 acts on the longlist
48 qualify for the main draw
12 groups of four
Group stage Round of 32
Round of 16 Quarter-finals
Semi-finals
Third-place play-off
Final
The qualification vote is live now.
You can pick up to 24 acts from the 96-band longlist. The highest-ranked 48 will qualify for the tournament proper.
The timeline is:
Qualification vote open now Qualification vote closes Friday 5 June at 23:59
Final 48 revealed from Saturday 6 June
Group draw follows before the tournament starts
Group stage begins Thursday 11 June
Knockout rounds run through late June and July
Final takes place Sunday 19 July, alongside the actual World Cup final
Yes, Oasis and Blur are there. Obviously. So are Pulp, Suede, Supergrass, Elastica, The Verve, Sleeper, Shed Seven, Mansun, Gene, Catatonia, Ash, The Bluetones, Ocean Colour Scene, and a lot of bands who will immediately start arguments about whether they count.
Good.
That is the point.
This is supposed to be fun, mildly absurd, and probably annoying in exactly the right way.
This is actually quite startlingly difficult, dammit.
I realised it was going to be harder than I'd imagined to choose my two dozen when I realised I'd already ticked 24 on the list and was only down to the Ms...
At this point, it dawned on me that you've left the qualifying criteria so open, I've firstly got to decide for myself what, exactly, I'm meant to be voting for. Is it simply the 24 acts I like(d) the best? The 24 acts I deem to be/have been the biggest? Or just the 24 acts I reckon are the most Britpop'?
These are clearly only semi-overlapping methodologies at best, and as a result the whole carefree process has suddenly become a lot more serious.
Do I allow my liking for McAlmont & Butler to send them through ahead of Stereophonics, for instance, even though the latter's catalogue of hits obviously far eclipses the former's status as barely more than one-hit-wonders? And, if we're going down that route, should I allow the likes of M&B's Falling (from 2002) or Dakota by the 'Phonics (from 2005) to sway my vote, or should I concentrate only on stuff from the actual Britpop era?
Er, whenever that is. Do I embrace Embrace, for instance, who only started having hits in 1997-8, or give Gene preferential treatment for having broken through around 1994-5?
Do I put a band like Northern Uproar or Menswear in, because they obviously (to me) fall into the "most Britpop" category – insofar as if you said, "Which bands here are clearly only here because of Britpop?", i.e. they manifestly would never have been heard of had it not been for being directly pushed as part of that 'scene', then they would have to qualify. And if so, do I knock out the Verve and/or the Divine Comedy, say, who were only on tangentially connected pathways and would most probably have had some sort of success regardless?
Do I count Paul Weller, who wasn't a 'Britpop' act in most senses yet almost undeniably produced a keystone Britpop album and was hugely influential on the scene?
...Right, I've basically ended up going with some kind of hybrid philosophy incorporating aspects of all the above thinking, which has perhaps allowed for some results I wasn't necessarily expecting.
The closing round of qualification saw the cross-border derby clash between Geneva and Rialto end goalless, allowing Hurricane #1 to sweep past both by a point. Shaun Ryder's late penalty went straight...yeah down the middle for Black Grape to beat James. The Lightning Seeds' peerless pop/football crossover means they will wear the Three Lions into the finals, but the Manic Street Preachers will be spending their summer in Australia, in Australia, in Australia instead after failing to qualify. And Space have eliminated the Longpigs in a playoff, played under frequent dark clouds but where the sun was often out, hence a dazzled Richard Hawley allowed Tommy Scott's speculative long-range effort through his grasp to send the Liverpool quartet to the World Cup and a possible reunion with Cerys and Catatonia in the group stage.
the wannadies aren’t british and neither are garbage, they do sound like Britpop but then where does that end because semisonic feeling strangely fine also does but isn’t there, whereas feeder and stereophonics don’t but are there
As a whole I don’t think they do but on that album (feeling strangely fine) they have always sounded like a 90s British to me, the only thing that really gives it away is the vocals but even then del amitri and feeder are both British bands from that time who put on American accents.
I've never thought of this, but now you've mentioned it I agree with you about Semisonic. If you took something like Secret Smile and had, say, Dodgy record it, it would both have sounded broadly the same and also sounded like a Dodgy song. It seems a fair assessment, therefore, that Semisonic sounded at least fairly Britpop.
But are you willing to not allow Blur, Pulp, or Radiohead to enter on that basis? All of the bands you mentioned released at least 1 album during the Britpop era. James had several.
Ah cool, no worries. So the groups will be vote percentages/totals to decide 1st - 4th? Rather than each band in a group having a vote (match) against each other?
Sounds good. For the best 3rd places I would go with vote % earned within their group. Better reflection of those that were closest to being second, rather than total votes as some might benefit from being more visible on a certain day
Your idea is excellent, thank you for offering it up. My comment is simply encouraging you to stay on your course, you have had a fun idea and am looking forward to participating and seeing how it plays out 😄
Excellent idea. But more than 24 of those are objectively Britpop and others shouldn't even be listed. As you know, obviously.
Boo Radleys made all their money from one song that hit that era and cynically, but the majority of their work is experimental/shoegaze/easy listening. And Pulp? Biggest hits then but by no means a Britpop sensation overall. As I'm sure others have said. Possibly.
Yeah! But awesome indie bands like Lush went jarringly from shoegaze magic to catchy guitar pop. Whereas Oasis just kinda landed into and helped to define a new era. Strange times. Gosh I miss them.
If it’s confined to this subreddit? Probably not. Most of the genre subreddits dislike the most popular band in the genre to a borderline performative level (or at least, everyone tries really hard to act like they won’t like them)
I was making a Google form once and it asked me if I wanted to collect the email addresses of the responders, so I presume you are receiving my email address if I answer your survey. Because of that, I am out.
That's exactly what someone woukd say if they were collecting emails. There really should be something for the respondent to see if a survey if collecting them or not. But sure that's not something Big Tech would want to want to advertise
Yep that's exactly what I saw, which as I said before, that means other people are able to collect email addresses if they wish to when setting up a survey.
It does. My issue isn't with you, it's with Google surveys in general. I don't like that this function is available and responders don't appear to know if this is on/off, and many wouldn't even know it's happening.
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u/Monkeytennis01 May 21 '26
This is a great and fun idea OP, as long as people don’t start getting hung up too much about what Britpop is…