Kevin Shields, the extremely wise and plugged-in founder of fuzz-gods My Bloody Valentine, just dropped a bomb on the British public: Brit-pop—the "Cool Brittania"-era explosion of ghastly, derivative rock'n'roll from the likes of Oasis, Blur, Pulp, and any other number of one-word bands—was in fact a conspiracy foisted on the Western world by British intelligence agencies. I mean, it's so obvious once you think about it.

But Shields, ever the enigma, dropped just the barest hint of the full story. According to a preview of an interview with the Guardian to be published in full later today, he told a reporter:

"Britpop was massively pushed by the government," he said. "Someday it would be interesting to read all the MI5 files on Britpop. The wool was pulled right over everyone's eyes there."

In the early years of Tony Blair's premiership, Britpop luminaries such as Noel Gallagher and Damon Albarn were vocal supporters of the Labour government, and visited 10 Downing Street. Shields said he would only have attended "on condition we could play a song".

What does it mean? Were the Gallagher brothers moles, raised in a state-of-the-art bunker buried far beneath the City of Manchester Stadium for the express purpose of creating garbage to lull American audiences? Were Blur's bizarre stylistic swerves secretly directed by GCHQ via encrypted message?

Shields has given us the first piece of the puzzle. We're drafting our Freedom of Information Act request for the Oasis file. The rest is up to you. Have at it.