As one of the biggest music writers of the 1990s, celebrated music writer Miranda Sawyer lived and breathed the Britpop era, those heady years in the 1990s when music suddenly meant everything. 

 

In her fascinating new pop history Uncommon People, Miranda picks out twenty key songs, to compile the ultimate mix-tape.  Delving into the surprising stories behind each song and their unlikely creators, Uncommon People takes us back to when Jarvis Cocker became a national hero, Trainspotting was a global hit, fire-starting seemed like a good night out - and it felt as though the revolution was happening.

Initially a music press nickname, Britpop became an unexpected musical movement centred around outsiders and misfits, drop-outs and weirdos who refused to compromise on their ideas, even when they were thrust into the international spotlight. Not just a scene for white guys with guitars, but something wilder and more interesting, with songs that have proved timeless. Exploring the era's key artists - Oasis, Blur, Tricky, Pulp, Underworld, Manic Street Preachers, The Prodigy, Suede, Chemical Brothers, Garbage, Supergrass, Radiohead, PJ Harvey and more - through their definitive anthems, Miranda Sawyer transports us back to the beating heart of the nineties.

Uncommon People re-lives the mad exhilaration of what it was like to hear these songs for the very first time - and what it was like to make them. With amazing new interviews, and I-was-there insights, this book offers a backstage pass to all the most interesting bits of Britpop's Greatest Hits.
 

Miranda Sawyer was at the heart of the golden era . . . and bears witness to the oddity and ambition of the awkward outsiders who briefly got the nation humming their tunes, equally enthralled by the usual headliners and unclubbable mavericks like Keith Flint, Tricky and P.J. Harvey"

― Mojo

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This is the story of, arguably, our last great pop movement in 20 songs. The usual suspects - Blur, Oasis, Pulp - are present and correct but it's lesser names who stories are most affecting . . . This is an informative and witty book that's nostalgic but never sentimental ― Sun