“Since I was born I started to decay.” These are Brian Molko’s words on “Teenage Angst“, a single from Placebo’s 1996 self-titled debut album. Taken out of context, the line sounds stark and depressing, like an admission of self-hatred. But within the song, it’s brilliant and indulgent. Buried between sludgy riffs and delivered in Molko’s reedy voice and sardonic tones, “decaying” sounds like something to aspire to; the perfect tagline in an anthem for outsiders.
I first discovered Placebo ten years after this song was released. I was a teenager then, which really is the only the time to discover such a band because you’ll never be as emotional and theatrical in such a shamelessly dedicated, earnest way again in your life – and Placebo could be all those things. Their music was bleak without being boring, stylish without being overt, and Molko’s painted nails, jet-black bob and permanently deadpan expression fit neatly among all the emo bands everyone was into at the time, who had likely been influenced by Placebo themselves a decade prior.
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When they first emerged, though, they were more than just a goth-grunge band who looked like emos-before-emos but sounded like Sonic Youth. At the tail-end of the 90s, a quick glance at the UK charts in particular could tell you that they stood out like a neon light in a dark alleyway. On one end of the spectrum you had the deliriously straight bubblegum pop of The Spice Girls, Steps and 5ive, and on the other were a slew of Britpop blokes like Oasis, Blur and others who people would barely later remember, like Babylon Zoo, Cornershop and Fat Les. Either way, it was all relatively heteronormative and regular, the campy 80s a faded acid-washed dream and the 70s an even further glam twinkle in the distance – all lost among a sea of sweaty-fringed lads in bucket hats and polo shirts, fist pumping with one hand and hollering “Lager! Lager! Lager!” while swilling beer around with the other.
Placebo weren’t anything like that – specifically Brian Molko. He was beautiful and androgynous, his red lipstick, crop tops and eyeliner positioning him as an alternative heartthrob for those snubbing the Gallagher brothers and Damon Albarn. Nowhere is this rejection clearer than when he appeared on the cover of Select – the magazine that coined the term “Britpop” – in 1998, with his top pulled down to show his nipples, hair framing his face like an angel and the headline “hello boys!” scrawled across in Barbie pink, alongside the words: “Placebo: the filthiest band in Britain”.
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