Ongoing History Daily: The origin of the word “Britpop”

Back in the middle 90s, the big buzzword in the UK was “Britpop.” This became an umbrella term for a fiercely proud made-in-Britain type of rock music that included Blur, Oasis, Elastica and a million other groups.  But where is that word–“Britpop”–come from? 

The first appearance of the word seems to have appeared in a British magazine called The Face in May 1994 in an article about Blur where they praised the band’s view of how the time had come for British pop, which they abbreviated to “Brit pop.”  A few months after that, the newspaper The Guardian used the word to describe a growing renaissance in British music. 

The real tipping point seemed to come with the use of the term in the first issue of The NME in January 1995.  After that, everyone began to use “Britpop” as a catch-all for all the new homegrown music of the middle 90s.