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Hey there, hip parade listeners. What you're about to hear is part 1 of this episode.

Part 2 will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month.

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Welcome to hit parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast.

I'm Chris Malampi, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song No. 1 series. On today's show, 28 years ago, in May of 1995, this single connection by the band Elastica rose to No. 2 on billboards modern rock tracks chart.

The song was ubiquitous on US alternative radio at the time and even crossing over to certain top 40 pop stations. It had a danceable beat and a bit of punk attitude.

To American listeners, Elastica were just the latest new band to offer catchy punk adjacent rock at the peak of alternative nation.

The band would even join the traveling Lollapalooza festival that summer. But a few things about this band and this song sailed over the heads of my fellow yanks. For one thing, connection was a cheeky homage to previous waves of British art punk.

For another thing, Elastica's front woman was at that time the object of fascination in the British tabloids for her musical power couple relationship with the lead singer of another leading UK band, Blur.

And finally, as only the most anglophilic Americans were aware in 1995, bands like Elastica and Blur, as well as Blur's rivals, a band called Oasis, were spawning a total craze on the charts in their homeland, a mania that was defiantly English. They called this madness Britpop.

Just last month, on hip parade, we talked about two previous waves of British rock that took over our charts in America, the British invasion of the 1960s.

...