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'Govinda' was the fourth hit single from Kula Shaker's chart-topping platinum debut album K. Crispian Mills and his three cohorts earned themselves an impressive total of four 1997 BRIT Award nominations including one for 'Tattva' as Best British Single.And here we have a pretty close repeat of the Manics track: fourth single from the album, peaked at 7, not the single that was actually nominated in its own right (for the record their other nominations were Best British Group, Best British Newcomers and Best British Album). I suppose you could argue that the two bands were both outsiders to the Britpop movement that granted them their biggest commercial success, but they have only one other significant thing in common: a fondness for controversial statements. It was a few months later when Mills talked in an NME interview of the attraction of putting giant flaming swastikas on stage "for the f___ of it" and their career never recovered, especially once said publication delved into some unsavoury incidents in his stepfather's past.
It's difficult to warm to Mills himself as a person or frontman, if I'm honest, and sensationally easy to mock the band's preoccupation with the romance of Indian culture as stereotypical upper-class cultural tourism. But with a decade and a half of nostalgia, I have to say that they did at least add a little bit of colour and I'm pretty this is the only Sanskrit-language track ever to appear on a Brits tie-in. It's horribly dated now, but I sort of admire the wilfulness of making this a single in the first place.
Buy Kollected - The Best Of Kula Shaker
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