Music of Great Britain
1. British
Popular Music
British popular music
and popular
music in general, can be defined in a number of ways, but
is used here to describe music which is not part of the art/classical music
or Church
music traditions, including folk music,
jazz,
pop and rock music.[1]
These forms of music have particularly flourished in Britain, which, it has
been argued, has had an impact on popular music disproportionate to its size,
partly due to its linguistic and cultural links with many countries,
particularly the former areas of British control such as United States, Canada,
and Australia, but also a capacity for invention, innovation and fusion, which
has led to the development of, or participation in, many of the major trends in
popular music.[2]
This is particularly true since the early 1960s when the British Invasion
led by The Beatles,
helped to secure British performers a major place in development of pop and
rock music, which has been revisited at various times, with genres originating
in or being radically developed by British musicians, including: blues rock,
heavy
metal music, progressive rock,
punk rock,
electric
folk,
folk punk,
acid jazz,
drum and
bass,
grime,
dubstep
and Britpop.
2.
Early British Popular Music
An eighteenth-century broadside
ballad
Commercial
music enjoyed by the people can be seen to originate in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries with the arrival of the broadside ballad, which were
sold cheaply and in great numbers until the nineteenth century. Further
technological, economic and social changes led to new forms of music in the
nineteenth century, including the brass band, which
produced a popular and communal form of classical music. Similarly, the Music hall sprang up
to cater for the entertainment of new urban societies, adapting existing forms
of music to produce popular songs and acts. In the 1930s the influence of
American Jazz led to the
creation of British dance bands, who provided a social and popular music that began
to dominate social occasions and the radio airwaves.
3.
British Popular Music In Each Era
1950s
Main
article: Music of the United Kingdom (1950s)
By 1950
indigenous forms of British popular music were already giving way to the
influence of American forms of music including jazz, swing and traditional pop, mediated
through film and records. The significant change of the mid-1950s was the
impact of American rock and roll, which provided a new model for performance and
recording, based on a youth market. Initially this was dominated by American
acts, or re-creations of American forms of music, but soon distinctly British
forms began to appear, first in the uniquely British take on American folk
music in the Skiffle craze of
the 1950s, in the beginnings of a folk revival that came
to place an emphasis on national traditions and then in early attempts to
produce British rock and roll.
1960s
Main
article: Music of the United Kingdom (1960s)
By the early
1960s the British had developed a viable national music industry and began to
produce adapted forms of American music in beat music and British blues which would
be re-exported to America by bands such as The Beatles and Rolling Stones. This
helped to make the dominant forms of popular music something of a shared
Anglo-American project. The development of British blues rock helped revitalised
rock music and led to the growing distinction between pop and rock music. In the
mid-1960s, British bands were at the forefront in the creation of the hard rock genre.
While pop music continued to dominate the singles charts, teen culture
continued to dominate. Rock began to develop into diverse and creative
subgenres that characterised the form throughout the rest of the twentieth
century.
1970s
Main
article: Music of the United Kingdom (1970s)
Led Zeppelin performing
in 1975
In the 1970s
British musicians played a major part in developing the new forms of music that
had emerged from blues rock towards the
end of the 1960s, including folk rock and psychedelic rock. Several
important and influential subgenres were created in Britain in this period, by
pursuing the possibilities of rock music, including electric folk and glam rock, a process
that reached its apogee in the development of progressive rock and one of
the most enduring subgenres in heavy metal music.[10] While jazz
began to suffer a decline in popularity in this period, Britain began to be
increasingly influenced by aspects of World music, including Jamaican music, resulting
in new music scenes and subgenres. In the middle years of the decade the
influence of the pub rock led to the British intensification of punk, which
swept away much of the existing landscape of popular music, replacing it with
much more diverse new wave and post punk bands who
mixed different forms of music and influences to dominate rock and pop music
into the 1980s.
1980s
Main
article: Music of the United Kingdom (1980s)
Dire Straits in 1985.
Rock and pop
music in the 1980s built on the post-punk and new wave movements,
incorporating different sources of inspiration from subgenres and what is now
classed as World music in the
shape of Jamaican and Indian music, as did
British Jazz, as a series of black British musicians came to prominence,
creating new fusions like Acid Jazz. It also
explored the consequences of new technology and social change in the electronic music of synthpop. In the
early years of the decade, while subgenres like heavy metal music continued
to develop separately, there was a considerable crossover between rock and more
commercial popular music, with a large number of more "serious"
bands, like The Police and UB40, enjoying considerable single chart
success. The advent of MTV and cable
video helped spur what has been seen as a Second British Invasion in the early years of the decade,
with British bands enjoying more success in America than they had since the
height of The Beatles' popularity in the 1960s. However, by the end of the
decade there was a fragmentation, with many new forms of music and
sub-cultures, including Hip Hop and House music, while the
single charts were once again dominated by pop artists, now often associated
with the Hi-NRG hit factory
of Stock Aitken Waterman. The rise of the Indie rock scene was
partly a response to this, and marked a shift away from the major music labels
and towards the importance of local scenes like Madchester and
subgenres, like gothic rock.
1990s
Main
article: Music of the United Kingdom (1990s)
In the
1990s, while the singles charts were dominated by boy bands and girl groups like Take That, and Spice Girls, British soul and
Indian-based music also enjoyed their greatest level of mainstream success to
date, and the rise of World music helped
revitalise the popularity of folk music. Electronic
rock bands like The Prodigy and Chemical Brothers began to
achieve a high profile. Alternative rock reached the
mainstream, emerging from the Madchester scene to
produce dream pop, shoegazing, post rock and indie pop, which led
to the commercial success of Britpop bands like Blur and Oasis; followed
by a stream of post-Britpop bands like Travis and Feeder, which led
the way for the international success of bands including Snow Patrol and Coldplay.
2000s
Main
article: Music of the United Kingdom (2000s)
Coldplay, considered
to be the most commercially successful British Rock act of the 2000s.
At the
beginning of the new millennium, while talent show contestants were one of the
major forces in pop music, British soul maintained and even extended its high profile
with figures like Joss Stone, Amy Winehouse and Adele, while a new group of
singer/songwriters, including KT Tunstall and James Blunt, achieved
international success. New forms of dance music emerged, fusing hip hop with garage to form grime.[20] There was
also a revival of garage rock and post punk, which when
mixed with electronic music produced new rave.
2010s to Present
The success of UK artists in the US
during the early 2010s led to some claiming a new British
Invasion was taking place, as British musicians took their largest ever
share of the US album charts year-on-year between 2011 (11.7% of US market),
2012 (13.7% of US market), 2013 and 2014. Notable British musicians achieving
global success at the beginning of the 2010s include One
Direction, Adele
and Mumford & Sons.[citation
needed]
Adele's album '21'
became the UK's best-selling album of the 21st Century and its 4th best-selling
album of all time in 2011, certified platinum 16 times. During the same year,
the Grammy-award
winning album Back To Black by British singer Amy
Winehouse became the UK's second best selling album of the 21st Century and
its 13th best-selling album of all time following her death in 2011, certified
platinum 11 times.
In 2013, despite the trend of
declining album sales persisting, the British music industry saw a 9% growth in
revenue which could be traced to "individual revenues by musicians,
singers, composers, songwriters and lyricists", adding £3.8bn to the UK
economy. In 2014, the UK's top 10 albums were all by British artists, including
releases by Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, George
Ezra, Paolo Nutini, Coldplay and One
Direction.
Sam Smith's debut album In the
Lonely Hour, released in 2014, peaked at number one in the United
Kingdom, New Zealand and Sweden, and number two in Australia, Canada, Denmark,
Ireland, Norway and the United States. In the same year, Ed Sheeran's
second album X charted at number one in twelve countries, topping both the UK
Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200, and reaching the top 5 in eleven other
countries. Also in 2014, One Direction's album 'Four' reached number 1 in the
UK, became the top charted album on iTunes in 67 countries and debuted at No. 1
on the Billboard 200 chart in the US. As a consequence, One
Direction became the first band to reach number one on the US Billboard
chart with each of their first four albums, British or otherwise.
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