Suede

Suede launched Britpop before anyone had named it. Their 1993 self-titled debut — built on Brett Anderson's androgynous vocals and Bernard Butler's melodramatic Gibson Les Paul — arrived like glam rock dragged through a council estate, and the NME declared them the best new band in Britain before they had released a single. Butler's departure before Dog Man Star was the first great Britpop tragedy. His replacement Richard Oakes was seventeen years old. Anderson's lyrics circled sex, drugs, and London poverty with a theatricality that owed more to Bowie than to Oasis's laddish directness. Coming Up in 1996 was their commercial peak.