Suede - The Drowners
Yadda yadda Bowie yadda yadda glam. Whatever. Meaningless comparisons really, when all you need to consider is that Suede (The London Suede to you, statesiders) pitched camp in pretty much all the music weeklies, monthlies, even making it onto the cover, without having first bothered to release so much as a single. How they would get away with this became apparent with the release of debut single The Drowners, a song so addictive I jammed down the record button pretty much every time it was played on the radio. But it wasn’t so much the single as its B-sides that let us know something special was happening. Later collected as Sci-Fi Lullabies, a 2CD set better than most bands could dream of (and better than quite a few actual later Suede albums, no point denying it), the Suede tradition of casually tossing out b-side masterpieces began with My Insatiable One and To The Birds and carried on with, well, with pretty much every other b-side.