Jay-Z in Da House! (Ding Dong Britpop is Dead)
July 7th, 2008“I don’t know about it. But I’m not having hip hop at Glastonbury. It’s wrong.”
– Noel Gallagher
Indeed. What was it about Noel Gallagher and others not wanting Jay-Z to perform at Glastonbury? I don’t think it was the low ticket sales that was the real reason for all the Jay-Z bashing that went on.
What was the real reason? For my money, it was the politics of mid-nineties britpop influencing the debate in 2008 still. Martin Cloonan wrote in State of the nation: “Englishness,” Pop and Politics in the Mid-1990s:
“Britpop” was not discussed in transcultural, global terms; rather, it was discussed in the language of petty nationalism and xenophobia. While the artists involved often pressed ambivalence, their work was discussed in nationalistic terms. Triumphalism accompanied artistic achievement.
Englishness was in and, Cloonan writes, “the artists who… [were] held to encompass a form of Englishness… [were] overwhelmingly white, male, and working in the rock/pop idiom where lyrics are important.” Add to this the worshipping of the past and the rejection of new electronic forms of music such as techno. Again Cloonan:
It was precisely at the time that techno and raves–music which is bound up in modern technology–came to dominance that the stirrings of the mid-1990s preoccupation with Englishness arose. The dominant types of pop Englishness have defined themselves precisely in opposition to modernist movements.
If we think about all this then it’s easy to see how Jay-Z is antithetical to everything britpop stood for. And when Noel Gallagher, one of the biggest figures in britpop, waded in on the debate whether Jay-Z is wrong for Glastonbury or not, he, in my mind, brought with him all the ugly implications britpop carried with it.
As Jay-Z said, it is ridiculous in 2008.
That’s why seeing Jay-Z on stage at Glastonbury with a guitar and singing Wonderwall was one of the most brilliant things I’ve watched in a while on YouTube. It was like him taking one of the holy cows of britpop and using it to stab the small-mindedness of the movement through it’s heart
Sadly, I don’t think it’ll stay dead.
References:
Cloonan, M. (1997) “State of the Nation: “Englishness”, Pop and Politics in the Mid-1990’s”, Popular Music and Society, 21:2, Summer 1997, pp.47-70.
