Suede’s third album, Coming Up, celebrates its 30th anniversary on September 3, marking the record that reset the band’s direction and became its biggest commercial success of the 1990s.
by Paul Cashmere
Thirty years after its release, Suede’s Coming Up remains the pivotal album in the band’s transformation from one of Britain’s most closely watched alternative rock acts into an international recording artist. Released on September 2, 1996 through Nude Records, the album followed the departure of guitarist Bernard Butler and introduced Richard Oakes and keyboardist Neil Codling to the band’s core lineup. Coming Up subsequently reached number one in the UK and produced five Top 10 singles.
The anniversary falls on September 3, 2026, 30 years after the album’s original release. Coming Up represented a deliberate change in approach after the darker, more elaborate Dog Man Star. Brett Anderson wanted the next Suede record to be direct, accessible and built around concise pop songs. The result was an album that broadened the group’s audience across Europe, Scandinavia, Canada and Asia, while establishing a new creative partnership between Anderson and the 17-year-old Oakes.
The personnel change was significant. Oakes secured the guitarist position after sending a demo to the Suede fan club and ultimately beating approximately 500 applicants. Rather than attempting to reproduce Butler’s role, he became part of a different songwriting process. Neil Codling was also brought into the group after the band needed keyboards for songs including “By the Sea” and “She”. Codling made his live debut with Suede at a fan-club performance in January 1996.
Producer Ed Buller returned after the band considered other possibilities, including Flood and Brian Eno. Buller and the group agreed that the new record should be simpler, with heavier drums, fewer guitar solos and limited use of strings. Recording took place between December 1995 and June 1996, with T. Rex providing an important reference point. The band spent a month at The Town House concentrating on drums, while Buller described his objective as making a version of The Slider for the 1990s.
The recording process also differed from Dog Man Star. Coming Up was developed more collaboratively, with Anderson describing it as a meritocracy in which the quality of an idea mattered more than where it originated. Dave Bascombe mixed most of the album, while Buller retained a more limited role in the final mixing process. His approach was designed around immediacy, with repeated endings, handclaps and straightforward choruses forming part of the album’s musical architecture.
The album’s songs reflected the cultural environment around them. “Beautiful Ones” and “She” examined celebrity culture, fashion and the world surrounding heroin chic, while “The Chemistry Between Us” addressed the emptiness of drug use among people whose only shared connection was being intoxicated. The music was considerably more accessible than the material on Dog Man Star, while the lyrics retained Anderson’s interest in alienation and contemporary British life.
Commercially, Coming Up changed Suede’s trajectory. It became the band’s second UK number one album and generated five UK Top 10 singles. It was certified platinum in Britain in January 1997 and had sold 425,000 copies in the UK by July that year. Worldwide sales reached approximately 1.5 million by 1998. Scandinavia became a particularly strong market, with the album reaching number one in Sweden and Denmark and number three in Norway. “Trash” also became Suede’s first overseas number one single, topping the Finnish chart.
The American story was markedly different. Coming Up was not released in the United States until April 1997 and received only limited touring support there, with Suede undertaking a three-city run. The album’s US sales were consequently substantially lower than its performance in Britain and Europe.
In Britain, the record’s success came at a time when Oasis, Blur and Pulp dominated much of the public conversation around guitar music. Coming Up gave Suede a way forward without attempting to recreate the circumstances of their debut. Its lasting importance lies in that recalibration: a band that had been destabilised by Butler’s departure and the demanding creation of Dog Man Star rebuilt itself around Oakes, Codling and a more direct songwriting philosophy.
The album was later nominated for the 1997 Mercury Prize and has continued to feature in retrospective assessments of British music from the era. Suede marked its 25th anniversary with a UK tour in November 2021, while Coming Up was also examined in the Sky Arts Classic Albums series that year.
Thirty years on, Coming Up stands as the record that demonstrated Suede could change direction without abandoning its identity. Its combination of concise songwriting, glam-influenced production and a newly configured band lineup gave Suede its strongest commercial period of the decade. The anniversary on September 3 provides an opportunity to reconsider the album not simply as a Britpop-era document, but as the defining reset of Suede’s early career.
Tracklisting
Trash
Filmstar
Lazy
By The Sea
She
Beautiful Ones
Starcrazy
Picnic By The Motorway
The Chemistry Between Us
Saturday Night
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