1. Justine Frischmann- Elastica/ Suede
Being the ultimate girl idol of Britpop, Justine Frischmann seemed to have it all- good looks, multiple Britpop celebrity boyfriends including Damon Albarn from Blur and Brett Anderson from Suede, and awesomely good music. The daughter of the engineering consultant behind the NatWest Tower, Frischmann was, in the awestruck words of Alex James, bass player with Blur, "cash rich" and privileged.
In 1988 Justine moved in with Brett Anderson, a boy from Haywards Heath who was soon to form the band Suede. After breaking up with Brett, Frischmann moved on to become the girlfriend of Damon Albarn, the singer with the fledgling and then super popular Blur. The awkward love-triangle created so much bitterness that each of them grew determined to become more famous than the others. Anderson made it first, when Suede released a beautiful album full of lovelorn songs about Frischmann. The jealous Albarn responded by vowing to "dethrone Brett and his group of cretins".
Nonetheless, the ex-singer and Britpop princess is now residing in the USA and paints in her spare time.
2. Louise Wener – Sleeper
Like so many in the 90s, Louise Wener dreamed of being a pop star in the UK. But for her it all came true. As the singer with Sleeper, she hit the big time during the Britpop era in the mid-1990s. The life was everything she had expected it to be, and more. Their first single, Alice In Vain, entered the charts at number 76 and Louise set about securing a future by writing stand-up Top 10 pop songs and garnering as much press coverage as they can.
She stepped out of the limelight because of the way the media treated her: "Because I wrote frank lyrics, I was depicted as sex-crazed and whorish (imagine such an accusation being levelled at a male rock star), and because I didn't lie down, look pretty and wax lyrical about my feminine angst, I was summarily demonised. One music paper even published letters in which men brayed for me to be burnt as a witch."
After the band split in 1998, Wener began a writing career and has written four novels: Goodnight Steve McQueen, The Big Blind (aka The Perfect Play) The Half Life of Stars and Worldwide Adventures In Love. Her autobiography, Different for Girls: My True-life Adventures in Pop (aka Just For One Day: Adventures in Britpop) was published in June 2010. In addition to writing herself, Wener has taught novel-writing. By 2011, she and Sleeper drummer MacLure had married and moved to Brighton, where MacLure teaches at a music college.
3. Miki Berenyi – Lush
Miki Berenyi is of mixed heritage and of Japanese and Hungarian blood. She is the daughter of Japanese actress Yasuko Nagazumi who played minor roles in the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice and the TV series Space: 1999. At the age of 14, Berenyi met future bandmate Emma Anderson at Queen’s College in England. They found they had a common bond: their parents had bounced them both from school to school depending on family finances at the time. Two years later, the two teenagers wrote and produced a fanzine called Alphabet Soup, which only lasted for five issues.
Berenyi became the lead singer of the band Lush, which from1987 until 1996, she released several albums, singles and videos, and toured extensively through the UK, North America, Japan, Australia and other countries.
The band is actually returning to the music scene in 2016 for a new release, so check them out for the latest developments.
4. Sonya Madan- Echobelly
Sonya Madan was known for great things -a great many things. Besides the fact that many are struck by similarities with Audrey Hepburn, behind this exterior lies a talented musician who was the front-woman for acclaimed 90’s ‘Britpop’ band Echobelly.
The band formed in 1993 after Sonya met guitarist Glenn Johansson in a pub and the two actively pursued a career in music. They teamed up with bass guitarist Alex Keyser and drummer Andy Henderson, who had previously played with PJ Harvey’s band. Guitarist Debbie Smith, formerly of Curve, came on board in 1994.
Sonya recalls; “We formed just before ‘Britpop’ came into existence and we got caught up on the whole bandwagon. When we started, ‘Britpop’ didn’t exist and a year later it did, so everything happened very quickly. It was an amazing time. When you’re going through it you don’t think anything about it; you’re just part of it. Retrospectively it was an amazing time for British music – the buzz and the excitement that something was happening that belonged to us, and we were part of it. I know a lot of bands came from outside London, but most of them were here (in London), and we all used to go drinking together and clubbing – it was really good fun!”
5. Cerys Matthews- Catatonia
Catatonia was formed in 1992, at the heights of the britpop scene (albeit a bit late). Cerys Matthew, being the front-woman of the Britpop band, subsequently sang lead vocals on, and co-wrote the music and lyrics for, the band's greatest hits. Songs she co-wrote included "You've Got a Lot to Answer For", "Mulder and Scully", "Dead From the Waist Down", and "Road Rage". Matthews also played guitar on the earlier material before second guitarist Owen Powell joined the band. She also performed a single with the band Space named "The Ballad of Tom Jones", which tells the story of two lovers who want to kill each other, but then hear a Tom Jones song that defuses their homicidal feelings.
By the late 90s Catatonia has gotten big and were everywhere, the toast of the town. But in 2001, after four albums, Matthews left the band, spent time in rehabiltation and dropped out of the limelight altogether. There are rumours that she moved to Nashville, USA, living in the woods and getting married. Matthews was voted the "Sexiest Female in Rock" in a 1999 readers' poll in the now defunct magazine Melody Maker.
