10 Perfect Britpop Albums Of The '90s

At the end of the '80s, any of the mainstream rock music usually had to be coming from California to make any real impact. As much as people wanted it to die, the order of the day was still about shoulder length hair and seeing how much makeup you could put on your face while still holding a guitar upright. Across the pond in Manchester though, we had the first rumblings of something new with the Stone Roses.

Although Second Coming feels more in line with the Britpop aesthetics in some ways, the Stone Roses' debut record is a landmark recording in British music, with songs that were part dance rock and part indie to create something impossible to resist. Along with the amazing vocal presence of Ian Brown, there was almost a mystical element to the Roses' first record, taking bits and pieces of music history and accidentally creating your favorite songs on a whim like She Bangs the Drums and Waterfall.

Once this record started picking up traction, we all got the feeling that the hair metal scene didn't have a chance against what we had going on. What the Roses were doing was something bigger than the Sunset Strip, and even bigger than the flannel shirt army up in Seattle. And it didn't take us much longer for us all to capitalize on it.