(Credits: Far Out / Album Covers)
Tue 10 February 2026 9:00, UK
The summer of 1995 represented the very heights of the Britpop movement. The streets of Britain were awash with music fans revelling in the liberated madness of the times, largely spearheaded by two bands whose rivalry became the heavyweight bout that defined this exciting new era.
As a byproduct of the unbridled Britpop excitement, Oasis and Blur were pitted against each other, representing some form of North and South divide through music. And while art is largely devoid of competition, the labels intervened and brought a definitive meeting place for these two behemoths to finally lock horns and put this squabble to bed.
During the long, hot summer of 1995, both bands released singles on August 14th to finally see who would take the throne of chart supremacy. Rather surprisingly, it was Blur, who history has shown won the battle, but not the war. But nevertheless, it was an exciting moment for British culture, if not pathetic.
“It was ridiculous, really,” Noel Gallagher reflected in 2019. “That whole part of the Britpop thing was so unnecessary. This was gonna be our single from the record, then some people from Creation said Blur are putting a single out on that date too, so we decided to put it back a week. Then they called and said they’ve put theirs back a week too.”
But Albarn has since explained exactly why he chose to go toe-to-toe with the Manchester band. Watching their rise to popularity and noticing it was somewhat at the expense of him and his own band, he decided to fight back. He explained, “Noel Gallagher used to take the piss out of me constantly, and it really, really hurt at the time. Oasis were like the bullies I had to put up with at school.”
It was probably right that Albarn and Blur ended up winning the battle, for it likely gave him some sort of personal closure. But Gallagher further elaborated on his discontentment with the entire thing, providing something of a backhanded compliment to Albarn and his song ‘Girls & Boys’.
He said, “The whole shame about the thing is that the two songs are shit, that’s it. If it was ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ and ‘Girls & Boys’, but ‘Country House’ is fucking dogshit. ‘Roll With It’ has never been played by anybody since the band split up, which tells its own story.”
I can’t help but feel like Gallagher is right, because the battle was perhaps the defining moment of Britpop culture, yet it feels completely misrepresentative of the whole thing. Nevertheless, the salaciousness of this chart battle seemingly defined it via chart performance; the winning single, ‘Country House’ by Blur, ended up being the longest-standing number one of the Britpop era.
How long did ‘Country House’ sit at the number one spot?
After gaining the number one position in the charts that summer, ‘Country House’ sat at the top for a total of two weeks. Which might sound meagre given the cultural relevance of the song, but it tops anything any of their rivals achieved, including Oasis.
While ‘Some Might Say’, ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’, ‘All Around The World’, ‘Go Let It Out’, ‘The Hindu Times’, ‘Lyla’, and ‘The Importance Of Being Idle’ all gained number one status, they never managed to stay there for longer than a week.