Britpop Boy Turns 40

By Phil Lucas

He’s the sort of bloke who has a pop-art print of Paul Weller in his living room,
and he’s the sort of bloke who would gaze at it
as he tries seducing to The Verve’s ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’.
He’ll look into Weller’s eyes and smile as he fails to hear Ashcroft sing,
“But I know I’m on a losing streak”.

And in the hum of a pub on Saturday night
he’ll go to the jukebox
spin in his pound
and think,
“These songs are my cool.
These songs are everybody’s cool.
These songs will thrill them all.”

But those songs, my friend, are the ones
that place another brick
in the wall between you and youth.

“All this talk of getting old,
it’s getting me down my love.”