My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields thinks Britpop was an MI5-driven conspiracy

My Bloody Valentine fans have long known that frontman Kevin Shields is a bit of an odd bird, but no one thought he might be actually crazy until now. In a new interview with The Guardian, Shields says he thinks the mid-‘90s Britpop explosion was all a cultural espionage plan orchestrated by MI5, the U.K.’s version of the C.I.A. Shields tells The Guardian that, because “Britpop was massively pushed by the government… the wool was pulled right over everyone’s eyes.” It’s unclear what wool he really means, unless he’s referring to the Gallagher Brothers’ eyebrows, but Shields seems to believe that the wave of patriotism that came out of the “Cool Britannia phenomenon” was a result of some sort of government conspiracy to convert young people into tea-drinking Tories.

While Britpop certainly did put the Union Jack in front of a lot more people, judging by statements that former Britpop superstars like Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn have made about the dangers of capitalism, consumerism, and imperialism, it seems a bit unlikely that the government would have put its trust in them as ambassadors. [via Pitchfork]