‘Thirty years is a terrifyingly long time,’ Crispin Hunt admits to M, contemplating the three decades that have passed since his band Longpigs released their breakout song She Said. ‘But it’s incredibly rewarding and fulfilling that people are still listening to [She Said] today. That feels like a wonderful thing.’
Released at the height of Britpop, She Said was the lead single from Longpigs’ 1996 debut album The Sun Is Often Out. Crispin and his bandmates — who counted Richard Hawley among their ranks — delivered a record that quietly became a cult favourite in what proved to be a defining cultural era for British music. It may not have been able to reach the gargantuan heights scaled by Oasis’ 1995 opus (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, but both The Sun Is Often Out and She Said remain testament to Crispin’s sharp and incisive songwriting.
Originally released as a single in July 1995, She Said cracked the top 20 of the UK singles chart 11 months later upon its re-release as Longpigs’ long-promised momentum gathered pace. Today, She Said boasts 10.5 million streams on Spotify — not bad at all for a band who split up eight years before the streaming service even launched.
'The second time She Said was released, in the summer of 1996, was desperately exciting,’ Crispin recalls. ‘Chris Evans, who was a massive DJ at the time, [promoted] it as his big song. He was getting his listeners to scream along with the embarrassing screaming bit in the middle…
'The most rewarding thing about She Said as a song is how it's about communication and communion. It's an extraordinary feeling when something you've created resonates with lots of people — even just going into shops and hearing people hum along to something you've written. That’s the real joy [of songwriting].'
As well as discussing the origins of Longpigs, the evolution of his songwriting identity and his wider reflections on Britpop and its recent revival — all of which you can watch in full in the above video embed — Crispin also reflects on the songwriting legacy he and Longpigs created during that period.
'I'm extremely proud and thrilled that occasionally now there as new, young bands who cite Longpigs as an influence, or you can hear a bit of us in their music,' he tells M. '5 million of those 10 million Spotify streams for She Said have come in the last couple of years, so it's exciting that people are still discovering it.
‘It gives me great hope in my own life that I've done something that is still resonating with the next generation.'
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