BRIT-POP ’97

With Oasis working on a new album, Blur scored the first points in the two bands’ rivalry this year when its new single, “Beetlebum,” debuted at No. 1 last week. But the U.K. pop scene is still recovering from astonishment over the song the Blur track replaced at the top of the chart: “Your Woman” by the previously unknown White Town, which has become the unlikeliest “next big thing” in recent memory.

The song is a beguiling mixture of indie-rock and ‘80s synth-pop in which the singer, his voice electronically distorted, tells a tale in which gender roles are intriguingly ambiguous.

The act is actually one person--Jyoti Mishra, 30, an Indian-born musician who lives in the industrial city of Derby and recorded the song in his bedroom. The song was released by an American label, the Illinois-based indie Parasol, which “paid” Mishra with 10 copies of the single. The shy musician ultimately plucked up the courage to send five of them to record companies and media, with one going to to BBC Radio 1 deejay Simon Radcliffe, who loved the song and played it in heavy rotation.

“The response has been bigger than anything we’ve ever had,” Radcliffe says. “This is bigger than Oasis.”

“Your Woman” is featured on a four-song EP titled “Abort, Retry, Fail?” and will be on the album “Women in Technology,” due Feb. 25 worldwide via a deal just signed with EMI. And the phenomenon has already spread to the U.S., where Kevin Weatherly, general manager of Los Angeles’ KROQ-FM, got hold of the single and added it to the station’s playlist last week.