10 Britpop Bangers You Totally Forgot Existed

5. LUSH – Ladykillers (1996)

London-based four-piece Lush were initially shoegazers, their earlier work replete with heavy reverb and wonky guitar effects. But their final studio album, 1996’s Lovelife, found the band marching to the beat of the Britpop drum, and the opening track was the punky and defiant foot tapper Ladykillers.

Standing out from the predominantly masculine crowd of the mid-90’s indie scene, Miki Berenyi’s lyrics, delivered with lightning pace, are fiercely feminist, and in being so sets this stomper up as pugnaciously different in tone, whilst displaying the shrewdness to stay in keeping with the relevant sound of the period.

The second verse, preceded by a sudden instrumental caesura and Berenyi claiming “here comes the next one,” makes you want to join in with the resulting Stealer’s Wheel-like handclaps. The song’s lampooning of male arrogance and unreciprocated sexual advances makes Ladykillers not just a dancefloor filler, but a piece of incisive, pre-Girl Power social commentary way ahead of its time.

STANDOUT LYRIC: 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.