Britpop feud fifteen years on.

This morning I heard Blur's 'Beatlebum' on the radio, and experienced a slight frisson of guilt at turning the volume up. The old feud should certainly have died now, but I always was definitely on the side of Oasis. This was partly because they're from my home town, although they do have one or two misguided ideas; it's partly because I liked their early singles in particular; and it's partly because by the time they appeared on the scene I'd already decided I didn't like Blur that much anyway.

For a couple of years before they became successful, I'd been quite interested in Blur. By 'interested' I mean that while I didn't find myself humming any of their tunes while I was washing up, I imagined they potentially had something I might want to explore at some point. When they released their 'eagerly anticipated' third album Parklife in 1994, I counted myself among the eager anticpators. The debut single, 'Girls and Boys' struck me as wry and clever, but ultimately irritating; ditto the title track, which received a lot of radio play at the time. I was still undecided when they released the album's second single, 'To The End'.

Never has a song more deserved the description 'neglected classic'. It is rarely mentioned in accounts of the era, or lists of the band's great recordings, yet it is one of the most beautifully desolate records ever. Damon Albarn's vocal sounds vulnerable, rather than clever; his voice stretches itself to convey the right emotion. The band's tendency to smugness, meanwhile, is reined in by the beguiling tune.

They spoiled it all by releasing 'Parklife' as a single. I'd already had enough of Phil Daniels' irritating spoken word narration, and Albarn's fake cockernee banter when it was just an album track. Now I was bombarded whenever I turned on the radio. The rest of the world seemed to disagree, and my irritation increased exponentially every time I heard it blaring from a white van or a trendy clothes shop, or accompanying a quirky news item about a dog invading a football pitch or something equally ridiculous. Oasis arrived at around the same time, and I was ready to swear hatred for Blur and everything they stood for.

Actually some of the things that Blur stood for - education, literacy and progressive politics - were alright; similarly, so were some of their subsequent singles. Nevertheless, I have now taken the pledge, and enjoying their work will never be anything other than a guilty pleasure.