Pulp.

Journeys through the past…

To survive, pop has to constantly reinvent itself. Over the past ten years, however, it has been less concerned with renewing itself than plundering its past. In the early Nineties, as record buyers rushed to update from vinyl to CD, record companies opened up their vaults and sold their back catalogues all over again, reinventing ever more ingenious ways to do so, such as ‘digitally remastered’ special editions of classic albums.

They were helped by the ‘baby boomers’ – the now 50/60-somethings, who are the most powerful economic force amongst record-buyers. With such a ready-made market for repackaged nostalgia, why should the record companies bother investing cash in new acts that, if they’re lucky, might produce just a hit single or two?

Not so long ago artists would be given a few singles, even an album, to prove their worth. Now new bands are lucky if they get past the second single.

In the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties it was largely the role of small independent companies to discover and nurture new talent, which would then be picked up by the major record companies.

The Britpop bands Oasis, Blur and Pulp, all emerged via this route. Major record companies then decided they wanted a part of this lucrative market, so they bought up independent labels such as Creation and Food, hoping they would continue producing hit records while resting under the umbrella of multinational entertainment corporations. They didn’t – and few of the once fertile independent labels of the early Nineties have survived into the new Millennium.