Forget Different Class, Parklife, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory, Elastica or Dog Man Star, no one album epitomised Britpop quite as much as a Shine compilation, at least not for an eleven year old boy who was undergoing his own pop awakening. It seems kind of obvious now, but in the spring of 1995, having graduated from my discarded cassette of The Red Hot Chili Peppers What Hits!? he found in a drawer, my oldest son Dan bought Shine One at the Virgin Megastore in Reading and never looked back.
Conceived in 1995 by some bright spark at Polygram Records to capitalize on Britpop, the Shine series success relied on the indisputable fact that it was always handy having a well curated compilation CD around rather than taking the time and effort to dig out songs from your own collection. Music snobs may not agree, but it was especially true for a kid whose pocket money only allowed him one CD a month.
Shine fulfilled that role admirably, Dan eventually taking the concept further by compiling his own series of mix tapes he wittily entitled Britty Good. In a case of role reversal, his enthusiasm for the Shine series also opened my ears to the Britpop phenomenon. Disconnected from the indie experience for the first time in years, the songs I heard coming out of his bedroom reinvigorated my own jaded enthusiasm for music and led to my discovery of Gene, Suede, Supergrass, Space, Placebo and Babybird in particular, all groups I’d never bothered with before.
Surrounded by Britpop and a media debating when it started, what it was, who was in and who was out, it would have been easy for Dan’s taste in music to succumb to the Britpop stereotype of a moronic form of sixties revivalism with Noel Gallagher at its head. But his nineties remained very much his own. Too young to care about who was or wasn’t Britpop, the songs he heard on Shine meant everything, his adoration having nothing to do with any press created, ‘Cool Brittania’ bullshit.
Somewhere between 1995 and 1997 Dan found himself slap bang in the middle of a period accorded the highest of musical accolades, a belief that Britain was passing through another once-in-a-lifetime cultural age of pop. And yet, in his head, Britpop always included a vast array of very different artists and groups, his love for The Prodigy and Suede every bit as strong as his love for Radiohead, the Manics or the Chemical Brothers. And I know for a fact that he was never tempted to explore The Beatles, The Kinks, or anything else sixties. Despite its reductive, revivalist name, Dan’s Britpop was a wholly nineties phenomenon and he didn’t care what you called it.
Of course, like every music genre Britpop couldn’t last. The start of its inevitable decline began in August 1997 with the release of the depressingly tawdry Be Here Now, the main protagonist’s eventually making way for the likes of Travis and Coldplay, groups heavy on melody and sincerity yet glaringly deficient in the sarcasm and swagger of their forebears. By then, after ten volumes, a Best of 1997 and a final round up, Shine had been discontinued and Dan had turned fifteen, a Saturday job finally allowing him to buy more and more albums.
No longer requiring a compilation to fill in the gaps, he soon forgot about his Shine collection and what it had once meant to him, the CD’s gradually slipping to the bottom of the pile, then to a box in the loft before being thrown out by mistake during a house move. And that was that until a quarter of a century later when a Reddit post nudged Dan’s memory and he began to think about Shine, Britpop and his mid-nineties adolescence all over again.
Which is where this playlist comes in, a long overdue resurrection of Shine featuring forty songs selected by the boy himself. Showcasing everything from big guitar anthems to noisy indie pop, it also includes the more diverse, complex non-conformists who refused to follow any party line, let alone Britpop’s. And what better place to start than ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’ which Dan insists is one of the best songs ever written about being young and disillusioned. Take it away Noel!
Chris Green
October 2026
SHINE (April 1995)
01. OASIS ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’ (A Side October 1994)
02. ELASTICA ‘Connection’ (A Side October 1994)
03. PULP ‘Do You Remember The First Time’ (A Side March 1994)
04. DODGY ‘So Let Me Go Far’ (A Side December 1994)
SHINE TOO (August 1995)
05. ASH ‘Girl From Mars’ (A Side July 1995)
06. THE STONE ROSES ‘Love Spreads’ (A Side November 1994)
07. TEENAGE FANCLUB ‘Sparky’s Dream’ (A Side May 1995)
08. SUEDE ‘Stay Together’ (A Side February 1994)
SHINE 3 (October 1995)
09. SLEEPER ‘What Do I Do Now’ (A Side September 1995)
10. THE BOO RADLEYS ‘From The Bench At Belvidere’ (A Side September 1995)
11. GENE ‘Olympian’ (A Side July 1995)
12. THE CHARLATANS ‘Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over’ (A Side August 1995)
SHINE 4 (January 1996)
13. SHED SEVEN ‘Getting Better’ (A Side January 1996)
14. BLUR ‘The Universal’ (A Side November 1995)
15. ECHOBELLY ‘Dark Therapy’ (A Side January 1996)
16. DUBSTAR ‘Anywhere’ (A Side September 1995)
SHINE 5 (July 1996)
17. SPACE ‘Female Of The Species’ (A Side May 1996)
18. SUPER FURRY ANIMALS ‘Something 4 The Weekend’ (A Side July 1996)
19. LUSH ‘Single Girl’ (A Side January 1996)
20. GARBAGE ‘Queer’ (A Side October 1995)
SHINE 6 (September 1996)
21. BABYBIRD ‘Goodnight’ (A Side July 1996)
22. ELECTRONIC ‘Forbidden City’ (A Side June 1996)
23. LONGPIGS ‘On And On’ (A Side April 1996
24. KENICKIE ‘Punka’ (A Side September 1996)
SHINE 7 (November 1996)
25. MANIC STREET PREACHERS ‘Everything Must Go’ (A Side July 1996)
26. PLACEBO ‘Teenage Angst’ (A Side September 1996)
27. SUPERGRASS ‘Lenny’ (A Side May 1995)
28. CATATONIA ‘You’ve Got A Lot To Answer For’ (A Side August 1996)
SHINE 8 (April 1997)
29. KULA SHAKER ‘Tattva’ (A Side June 1996)
30. JAMES ‘She’s A Star’ (A Side February 1997)
31. GORKY’S ZYGOTIC MYNCI ‘Diamond Dew’ (A Side March 1997)
32. ‘EELS ‘Novocaine For The Soul’ (A Side July 1996)
SHINE 9 (September 1997)
33. REPUBLICA ‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’ (A Side April 1997)
34. RADIOHEAD ‘Paranoid Android’ (A Side May 1997)
35. SNEAKER PIMPS ‘Post-Modern Sleaze’ (A Side July 1997)
36. SPIRITUALIZED ‘Electricity’ (A Side July 1997)
SHINE 10 (August 1998)
37. EMBRACE ‘All You Good Good People’ (A Side February 1997)
38. RIALTO ‘Untouchable’ (A Side January 1998)
39. BERNARD BUTLER ‘Stay’ (A Side January 1998)
40. THE SEAHORSES ‘Love Me And Leave Me’ (A Side September 1997)
