Twenty years ago, one song would become the scapegoat for the implosion of British guitar music, the death knell for a generation’s worth of bands whose sole mission seemed to be to make it into the pages of NME. “I think you can kind of say that in 2006, at the start of this [song], music was in quite an interesting place,” Johnny Borrell said in 2016. “Then three-and-a-half minutes later it’s f***ed.”
The Razorlight frontman was, in fact, talking about his band’s own hit single, “Before I Fall to Pieces”. Featured on their second album, the self-titled Razorlight, the jangling guitar track was branded by Borrell as the catalyst for what we now refer to as “landfill indie”, that heady scene of sticky dancefloors, sweaty side-fringes and jeans so skinny they cut off your circulation. “I think the second Razorlight album definitely opened the way for a flood of mediocrity in UK music,” he declared.
