republica

As the world hurtles towards a new decade, I’m reminded by uncountable ‘nineties nostalgia’ posts that my teenage years are now twenty years behind me. Given that an invisible hand seems to flick the warp drive switch once you hit thirty, and my precious memories are increasingly likely to be frazzled away by 24-hour news headlines, I thought it was wise to document here the musical role models that helped me survive those fledgling years. After all, is there anything more important than music to the teenage mind?

I was a teenager during the era of Cool Britannia, which was laced with an unabashed optimism so potent it seemed smug and nauseating to the next generation. New Labour were finalizing details on the Good Friday Agreement and passing bills about minimum wage . The success of the Richard Curtis film Four Weddings and a Funeral spearheaded a resurgence in British cinema and films such as Trainspotting, Sliding Doors, and Martha Meet Frank Daniel and Laurence (classic!) followed.

And then there was the music. The sounds that could not be silenced by the two hundred miles between Wesminster and my home in the North East of England. Government funding didn”t reach us but This is How It Feels by Inspiral Carpets did. Then Ride released Chelsea Girl and before any of us had time to hide our Take That CDs in the nearest drawer, a stream of indie bands from Manchester, Liverpool, York, Leeds, Scotland, Wales and Ireland seized their moment on the airwaves.

And I was there then.

We were the Ladettes. We drank pints. We taped episodes of Eurotrash onto VHS for repeat viewing. We hacked off our hair with blunt kitchen scissors after watching Sleeper perform on Top of the Pops. We wore green eye shadow and thick black liner. We all learnt three guitar chords (minimum) as a matter of self-respect, and so we could play Doll Parts by Hole at parties.

We were the girls who shopped for bootleg CDs at the corn exchange in Leeds on rainy Saturdays. Our boyfriends made us mixed tapes full of Belle and Sebastian, Idlewild and the Beta Band. We pouted and asked: ‘why no Garbage?’ We bought the NME. We discussed how Crispian Mills was misunderstood, and how Richard Ashcroft looked like Paul Weller’s secret lovechild, and how one day we were going to sign a record deal on the back of a beer mat in some pokey Camden pub just like Justine Frischmann.

We were the girls who grew into the women that still remember band names like Gay Dad, Northern Uproar, Delakota, The Young Offenders, and the Younger Younger 28s. And below are ten female-fronted British bands who rocked our nineties world:

Lush

I’m as human as the next girl / I like a bit of flattery / but I don’t need your practiced lines / your school of charm mentality / so save your breath for someone else / and credit me with something more / when it comes to men like you I know the score / I’ve heard it all before.