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The 31st of May 1998 was with hindsight a decidedly late date to be saying the last rites for Britpop, but it was the singles chart revealed on that day that finally made it evident to me and my brother that the game was up. In an interesting coincidence, it also includes the follow-up to the Natalie Imbruglia single in the last post, which sheds an interesting light on some of the oddities in chronology thrown up by Now! albums. Its most relevant feature, though, is the failure of several anticipated indie-oriented releases: the single that was expected to break Gorky's Zygotic Mynci into the Top 40 stiffing at 60, Kenickie's big airplay hit 'I Would Fix You' barely scraping the Top 40, a James song I actually liked only getting to 29 etc etc.
The one glaring exception was 'Come Back To What You Know' (yes I am finally going to mention the song this post is meant to be about!) which sailed straight in at 6, the highest-charting Embrace single at that time (it was only outdone in 2006). I had myself bought their three previous hits because it seemed to be what I was supposed to do, and I'd probably have bought the original 7" version of 'All You Good Good People' had I ever seen a copy. Yet I'd listened to each one with declining enthusiasm, and at some point in the six months before this single was released I'd turned on them severely, which perhaps made me the equivalent of somebody who's recently given up smoking. Self-referentially we used to joke about video, imagining they were all captured by some force and turned into zombies thinking "Must... buy... Embrace... record..." Looking at that chart it felt like a tide had turned somewhere and the nation had decided that listening to "alternative" music wasn't supposed to be fun ever again.
In fact, when I listen to it now, this record isn't quite as bad as it seemed at the time, and no worse than many other Embrace singles (it's certainly better than 'One Big Family') but it still suffers from a sense of more of the same: their determination to turn every song they wrote into a big fist-pumping anthem makes it seem inevitable that you'd get a bit tired of them by about the fourth single you heard, whichever one it actually was. It also contrasts uncomfortably with Danny McNamara's flat and rather charmless voice, which with hindsight might have worked well fronting a more humble-sounding band. It seems like I might not have been completely alone, either; whilst this single was clearly anything but a flop and the album went straight in at the top a couple of weeks later, there was a certain sense that they never became quite as big as they might have if they'd managed to release an album in the spring or sooner. And their one attempt to play against type with the 1999 comeback 'Hooligan' seems to have generated more confusion than momentum. It was pretty much downhill from here commercially until 2004, and I wasn't too sorry. My feelings have softened now and I realise I can't blame them entirely for the gulf that seemed to re-open between popular and "serious" music around this time, but I still can't really enjoy this. Nice string arrangement though.
Also appearing on: Now 38, 41, 59, 63
Available on: The Good Will Out
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