Oasis' third album "Be Here Now" (1997) was highly anticipated. Despite initially attracting positive reviews and selling strongly, the record was soon subjected to strong criticism from music critics, record-buyers and even Noel Gallagher himself for its overproduced and bloated sound. Music critic Jon Savage pinpointed "Be Here Now" as the moment where Britpop ended; Savage said that while the album "isn't the great disaster that everybody says," he noted that "t was supposed to be the big, big triumphal record" of the period. At the same time, Blur sought to distance themselves from Britpop with their self-titled fifth album, assimilating American lo-fi influences such as Pavement. Albarn explained to the "NME" in January 1997 that "We created a movement: as far as the lineage of British bands goes, there'll always be a place for us ... We genuinely started to see that world in a slightly different way."