Recommendations of the Editorial team
Essential
SUEDE
1993
Suede never wanted to be Britpop. Bassist Mat Osman said laconically about their influence: “Suede were Dr. Frankenstein, but not the monster.” They still had a musical home: With their 1993 debut, they were the most successful glam band since T. Rex, and they certainly had less in common with “Cool Britannia” than with Kate Bush and her poetry about dreams of zoomorphism, Dungeons & Dragons and the magic of tarot cards. “So Young” celebrates youth, “The Next Life” celebrates the afterlife. In it, Brett Anderson himself celebrates a trip to eat ice cream in the spa town of Worthing as if it were a matter of life and death.
DOG MAN STAR
1994
The abolition of Darwin’s hierarchies: “Dog Man Star”, animal and human, no longer slave and master, but of equal status – stars. Anderson loathes the B-word, but in 1994 the Big Four of Britpop released important albums in the same year: Oasis with “Definitely Maybe”, Pulp with “His ‘n’ Hers”, Blur with “Parklife” and Anderson’s Suede with “Dog Man Star”.
Whether the record is better than the competition has been debated in pubs for more than thirty years. The final “Still Life” drove the band apart; guitarist Bernard Butler would soon leave Suede, he found the orchestration too pompous. In fact, “Still Life” offers an unembarrassing harmony of classical and pop, great beautiful sound, a completely different, much braver world than that of today’s neoclassics.
COMING UP
1996
His successor was 19-year-old guitarist Richard Oakes, who preferred a less fuzzy, less voluminous playing. “Coming Up” is the slim pop album from the band, who were able to hold their own surprisingly well in the “Cool Britannia” year of European Football Championships, Spice Girls, “Trainspotting” and the record numbers of Oasis from Knebworth. “Trash”, a pre-single based on David Bowie’s “Heroes”, evoked memories of old British masters – together with “Stay Together” their most successful UK single (number 3).
REWARDING
Head Music
1999
Richard Oakes was getting bigger and bigger because he was drinking more and more out of frustration. Brett Anderson became increasingly thin as he consumed more and more crack and cocaine out of frustration.
The result is an album that offers something more than the sum of its individual parts – electronic music was the working idea and made “Head Music” a concept album about the question of whether clubbing doesn’t primarily take place in the head. Like on the cover: the body as a psychedelic resonance space.
For a rock band, turning to electronics was daring, U2 had a hard time with “Pop” two years earlier. Trip-hop was the sound of the moment. Suede’s last number one album contained two respectable singles, “Electricity” and “She’s In Fashion”.
THE BLUE HOUR
2018
Pop that could be described as “adult” – but not in the uncool sense of adult contemporary found in “diversion playlists”: Songs like “Roadkill” or “Dead Bird” present Anderson, 51, as a survivor.
He survived his addiction to heroin in the 1990s, and later crack and cocaine. This is also why songs about animals that are in danger, were careless, were hit and died on the side of the road.
This is how Anderson’s fascination with the “Blue Hour” motif arose: dead living beings and how they can be viewed or utilized by humans, that “elevated beast”.
ANTIDEPRESSANTS
2025
Some say that the entire Gothic genre emerged in 1979, with Bauhaus, Siouxsie And The Banshees and Co., as a reaction to the escalating Cold War between the bloc powers.
Suede’s first gothic rock album also follows the idea of a lost world that is doomed – the Ukraine war and Trump hover over the eleven songs of their current album, in which Anderson also uses spoken word.
“Disintegrate” is one of their best tracks. “Antidepressants” is considered the middle piece of a trilogy of “black and white albums” and follows “Autofiction” from 2022.
SUPPLEMENTARY
A NEW MORNING
2002
The cover may be reminiscent of the great, short era of “self-burned” (does the word even still exist in the digital context today?) CDs at the beginning of the noughties, but in the new millennium Suede fatigue set in. A New Morning did not reach the top 20 of the UK charts and is the only Suede album not to be released in the US.
But even if the return to glam pop didn’t seem bold after the electronica experiments of “Head Music”, the songs, especially “Positivity”, are not as bad as their reputation. And Anderson was clean – “the first album recordings without drugs”.
NIGHT THOUGHTS
2016
Certainly their strongest work since “Head Music” and a reason for optimism after the rather exhausting “comeback” album “Bloodsports” three years earlier. Brett Anderson integrated orchestral arrangements into the sound for the first time since “Dog Man Star”, which reinforced the cinematic atmosphere of the Ed Buller production.
The band resorted to an unusual working method for the first time: guitarist Oakes, bassist Osman, drummer Simon Gilbert and pianist Neil Codling composed instrumental pieces, Anderson later came to the studio in Belgium and wrote his lyrics – fans to this day want an instrumental version of “Night Thoughts”, which Suede hopefully will do. Until then, you should enjoy the record as a quasi-soundtrack.
AUTO FICTION
2022
Brett Anderson wrote the meaningful lead single “She Still Leads Me On” after the death of his mother. “Autofiction” is Suede’s “rearview mirror record,” a reflection on his own life, especially his childhood, inspired by his autobiography “Coal Black Mornings.” Anderson defended creative freedom in describing his life, comparing it with Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”: “Lots of fantasy characters, orcs and wizards, but also moments of human truth.” The Expanded Edition contains powerful live versions of all album songs – late satisfaction for the fact that Suede couldn’t record the record live in small clubs because the pandemic mall destroyed such plans.
WEAKER
Bloodsports
2013
Suede don’t have a single truly bad album to their name, but of the less than worthwhile ones, this is their least satisfying. Here, after a ten-year break, they sounded like Keane: expensive, elegantly decorated, but pointless. The pathos and melancholy of “Dog Man Star,” which was clearly intended to serve as a model, finds its counterpart in lifeless songs like “Snowblind.”
BOOK
Brett Anderson, “Coal Black Mornings”
Apparently Anderson grew up in a forest hut, the family had to kill game and roast it over an open fire. He himself roamed around between the bushes, it was the law of the strongest that counted, he described it as a “Lord of the Flies” world.
Anderson proves himself to be an outstanding narrator in his memoirs. And with breathtaking triviality he reports an appreciation: a Mike also responded to an early “drummer wanted” ad. A Mike from Manchester. A Mike Joyce from Manchester. Former Smiths drummer. He came to a rehearsal, but no agreement was reached. Anderson writes that he was afraid of being overwhelmed by the Smiths’ legendary status.
ROLLING STONE presents: Suede on tour with new album
Suede, the band that practically invented Britpop, is touring with their new album “Antidepressants”. On March 9th they will play at the Uber Eats Music Hall in Berlin.
These are suede
At the beginning of the 1990s, Suede conquered the charts and hearts of the English people: with their first singles “The Drowners” (1992), “Animal Nitrate” (1993) and their debut album of the same name “Suede” (1993), they were quickly celebrated as pioneers of British rock. Ultimately, with and around Suede, the term “Britpop” finally established itself as an independent genre.
Founded in 1981 by Brett Anderson and Cat Osman, disbanded in 2003 and reunited with an active line-up in 2013 at the latest, the rock band is one of the most established names in the music scene. In their early days they were compared to artists like David Bowie or The Smiths and the band quickly became a favorite on the English peninsula before they stormed the British and international charts with their third studio album “Coming Up” (1996).
After their separation in 2003, Brett Anderson tried in vain with solo projects until the band gradually started playing a few live shows again and ultimately celebrated their return ten years later with “Bloodsports”.
Back in business: new album and tour
Since then, Suede has released four more albums. Now their tenth record “Antidepressants” was released on September 5th. According to their own statements, the post-post-punk album by the Britpop greats delivers “broken music for broken people”. Her single “Dancing With The Europeans,” for example, is about the search for connections in an alienated world. However, their sound is still the same, dynamic and driving, as it was at Suede’s beginnings.
With the new album, the band also celebrates their return to the stages of European concert halls. After a three-year break from performing, Suede returns with their “Dancing with the Europeans” tour. They will launch in the UK in January 2026 before heading to other locations in Europe in March.
On March 9th you can also experience them in Berlin at the Uber Eats Music Hall. The Fan presale starts on September 17th at 10 a.m. exclusively via Eventim, general ticket sales open one day later, on Friday September 19th.
People don’t just get sick so they can make great songs out of their experiences. Even if it almost seems that way sometimes. “June Rain” on “Antidepressants”, Suede’s tenth studio album, conjures up the feeling of dissociation: “I’m an alien on the opposite side of the road,” sings the now 57-year-old Brett Anderson, who fortunately has been addicted to drugs for a while, “the June rain where I hang myself out to dry,” he further poeticizes, effortlessly and skillfully breathing a second level into “drying.”
