Music of the United Kingdom

Music of the United Kingdom
Royal Albert Hall, London, a major venue for all forms of music
Timeline
General Topics
Early popular music • 1950s and 60s • 1970s • 1980s • 1990s to present
Genres
Classical • Early music • Folk • Hip Hop • Jazz • Pop • Popular • Rock • Soul
Traditional Forms
Ethnic music	Caribbean • England • Ireland • Scotland • Wales
Traditional music	British folk revival • Ballad • Carol • Children's song • Hornpipe • Jig • Morris dance • Protest song • Reel • Sea shanty • Strathspey • War song • Work song
Media and Performance
Music awards	Mercury • The Brit Awards • Gramophone Awards
Music charts	Singles Chart • Classical Chart • Albums Chart • R&B Chart • Indie Chart • Dance Chart • Rock Chart
Music festivals	Cambridge folk • Download • Edinburgh • Eisteddfodd • Glastonbury • Isle of Wight • Knebworth • Royal National Mod • The Proms • Reading and Leeds • T in the Park • V
Music media	NME • Melody Maker • Mojo • Q • The Wire • The Gramophone
National anthem	"God Save the Queen"
Regional Music
Local forms	Birmingham • Cardiff • Cornwall • Liverpool • Manchester • Northumbria • Somerset • Yorkshire
Other regions	Anguilla • Bermuda • Cayman Islands • Gibraltar • Montserrat • Turks and Caicos • Virgin Islands
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British popular music in the 1990s and 2000s continued to develop new sub-genres and fusions. While the singles charts were dominated by boy bands and girl groups in the 1990s and the products of reality TV talent shows in the 2000s, British soul and Indian based music also enjoyed its greatest level of mainstream success, and the rise of World music helped revitalise the popularity of folk music. New forms of dance music, fusing hip hop with trance to form trip hop and with garage to form grime. Indie pop reached the mainstream, emerging from the Madchester scene to produce dream pop, shoegazing, post rock and indie pop, which lead to the mainstream success of Britpop bands like Blur and Oasis, electronic rock bands The Prodigy and Chemical Brothers, trip hop bands notably Massive Attack, and rock bands such as Radiohead, The Verve and Muse. These were followed by a stream of "post pop" bands like Travis and Feeder which led the way for the international success of bands like Snow Patrol and Coldplay.

Pop

The success of American boy band New Kids on the Block from about 1989, led to replica acts in the UK, including Nigel Martin-Smith's Take That and East 17, competing with Irish bands Westlife and Boyzone.^[1] Soon after, girl groups began to reappear, like the R&B act Eternal, who achieved a string of international hits from 1993.^[2] The most successful and influential act of the genre were the Spice Girls, who added well-aimed publicity and the ideology of girl power to their pop careers. They had nine number 1 singles in the UK and US, including "Wannabe", "2 Become 1" and "Spice Up Your Life" from 1996.^[2] They were followed by British groups like All Saints, who had five number 1 hits in the UK and two multi-platinum albums.^[3] By the end of the century the grip of boy bands on the charts was faltering, but proved the basis for solo careers like that of Robbie Williams, formally of Take That, who achieved six number one singles in the UK between 1998 and 2004.^[3] New girl groups managed to continue to enjoy sustained success, including Sugarbabes^[4] and Girls Aloud, the last of the these the most successful British product of the many popstars format programmes, which began to have a major impact in the charts from the beginning of the 2000s.^[5] The most successful solo winner Leona Lewis enjoyed a number one album in 2008 and her début single "Bleeding Love" was the first number one single in the U.S charts by a British solo female artist since Kim Wilde in 1987.^[6] Other successful pop artists include Seal, Ting Tings, Mika, Dido, James Blunt, Lily Allen.

British soul

After Soul II Soul's breakthrough R&B hits "Keep on Moving" and "Back to Life" in 1989, existing black soul acts, including Omar and acid jazz bands Incognito and Brand New Heavies, were now able to pursue mainstream recording careers.^[7] Particularly noticeable was the proliferation of British female black singers including Mica Paris, Caron Wheeler, Gabrielle and Heather Small.^[8] British soul in the 2000s has also been dominated by female singers, many of them white, including Natasha Bedingfield, Joss Stone, Amy Winehouse,^[9] Adele and Duffy, all of whom have enjoyed success in the American charts, leading to talk of a "Third British Invasion", "Female Invasion" or "British soul invasion".^[10] In 2009, Jay Sean's single "Down" reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold two million copies in the United States,^[11] making him "the most successful male UK urban artist in US chart history."^[12]

Hip hop

By the early 1990s the British hip hop seemed to be thriving, with flourishing scenes in London, Bristol and Nottingham.^[13] British rap became more assured of its identity, abandoning American accents and developing a more distinctive sound.^[13] However, the anticipated success was not achieved, with the British hip hop scene particularly affected by the record industry clamping down on sampling. The result was the development of the breakbeat culture, searching out obscure recordings^[13] and the creation of original music, with bands like Stereo MCs beginning to playing instruments and sampling their own tunes.^[14] Arguably this led to a creative renaissance, with British hip hop shifting from the hardcore American template and moving into more melodic territory.^[15] At the beginning of the 2000s a new style of electronic music, influenced heavily by hip hop and UK garage, and dubbed grime (sometimes called eskibeat or sublow), included acts such as Dizzee Rascal, J-Dawg, Wiley, Sway DaSafo, Ghetto and Kano.^[16] There was also the development of trip hop as part of the Bristol scene, which mixed house music and hip hop, producing successful bands such as Massive Attack and Portishead.^[13] The eponymous debut album of Gorillaz, created by Damon Albarn in 2001, sold over seven million copies and earned them an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as the Most Successful Virtual Band.^[17] The success of The Streets' 2002 album Original Pirate Material drew the media's attention to lighter, more melodic rap as a form of pop music and this was followed by the success of Welsh rap group Goldie Lookin' Chain and acts like N-Dubz, Tinchy Stryder and Chipmunk, dubbed "Brithop" by the press.^[18]

Dance music

In the early 1990s, dance music saw more exposure at rock music festivals like Glastonbury and Reading. Raves, many illegal, continued to be organized and the tension caused by police attention, new putative legislation aimed at organisers, and the increase of harder music, led many dance music fans to return to legal night clubs, where rave music had given way to progressive house.^[19] Other clubs emerged to play the ever-splintering genres associated with the house music and rave scene, including hardcore techno, downtempo and trance, drum and bass and happy hardcore. Bristol saw the development of trip hop, which mixed house and hip hop music^[13] and grime which mixed hip hop and garage.^[16] The 1990s also saw the development and refinement of IDM, which borrowed from forms such as techno, drum and bass, and acid house music and introduced more abstract elements, including heavy use of digital signal processing.^[20]

Post-Bhangra

After the establishment of thriving south Asian music scenes in the 1980s, the 1990s saw Indian music reach the mainstream, particularly through a series of "post-Bhangra" fusions.^[21] A fusion of Bhangra and reggae beats helped make Apache Indian the first British south Asian pop star, reaching number 5 in the UK singles charts with "Boom Shack-A-Lak" in 1990 and becoming the first south Asian DJ in 1994.^[22] The album Migration (1994) by Nitin Sawhney fused flamenco and other genres with Bhangra. By 1997 Indian music artists such as Talvin Singh had become mainstream stars in the UK. In 1998 Corner Shop, reached number 1 in the singles charts with a version of "Brimful of Asha" remixed by Fatboy Slim.^[22] M.I.A. released the album Kala in 2007 which mixed Tamil folk genre urumee melam with drum and bass and soca.^[23]

Folk resurgence

Traditional folk music, having been in a slow decline from mainstream popularity since the 1970s, began to enjoy a resurgence in the 1990s, benefiting from the more general interest in World music.^[24] The arrival, and sometimes mainstream success, of acts like Kate Rusby, Nancy Kerr, Kathryn Tickell, Spiers and Boden, Seth Lakeman, Eliza Carthy, Runrig and Capercaillie, all largely concerned with acoustic performance of traditional material, marked a radical turn around in the fortunes of British folk music.^[22] This was reflected in the adoption creation of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2000, which gave the music a much needed status and focus and the profile of folk music is as high in Britain today as it has been for over thirty years.^[24]

Heavy metal

Probably the most successful British metal band since the days of NWOBHM were Cradle of Filth, formed in 1991, and pursuing a form of extreme metal that is difficult to categorise.^[25] The term "retro-metal" has been applied to such bands as The Darkness, whose unique mix of glam rock and heavy riffs earned them a string of singles hits and a quintuple platinum album with One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back (2005), which reached number 11.^[26] Bullet for My Valentine, from Wales, broke into the top 5 in both the U.S. and British charts with their melodic dark rock, with Scream Aim Fire (2008).^[27]

Indie rock

Madchester

The independent rock scene that had developed in Manchester in the second half of the 1980s, based in the The Haçienda nightclub and Factory Records and dubbed Madchester, came to national prominence at the end of the decade, with the Happy Mondays, the Inspiral Carpets, and Stone Roses charting late in 1989.^[28] The scene became the centre of media attention for independent rock in the early 1990s, with bands like World of Twist, New Fast Automatic Daffodils, The High, Northside, Paris Angels, and Intastella also gaining national attention.^[28] The period of dominance was relatively short lived with The Stone Roses beginning to retreat from public performance while engaged in contractual disputes, the Happy Mondays having difficulty in producing a second album and Factory Records going bankrupt in 1992.^[28] Local bands catching the tail-end of Madchester, such as The Mock Turtles, became part of a wider baggy scene. The music press in the UK began to place more focus on shoegazing bands from the south of England and bands emerging through US grunge.^[28]

Dream pop and shoegazing

Dream pop had developed out of the indie rock scene of the 1980s, when bands like Cocteau Twins, The Chameleons, The Passions, Dif Juz, Lowlife and A.R. Kane began fusing post-punk and ethereal experiments with bittersweet pop melodies into sensual, sonically ambitious soundscapes.^[29] The 4AD record label is the one most associated with dream pop, though others such as Creation, Projekt, Fontana, Bedazzled, Vernon Yard, and Slumberland also released significant records in the genre. A louder, more aggressive strain of dream pop came to be known as shoegazing; key bands of this style were Lush, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, Alison's Halo, Chapterhouse, Curve and Levitation. These bands kept the atmospheric qualities of dream pop, but added the intensity of post-punk-influenced bands such as The Chameleons and Sonic Youth.^[30]

Post rock

Post rock originated in the release of Talk Talk's album Laughing Stock and US band Slint's Spiderland, both in 1991, which produced experimental work influenced by sources as varied as electronica, jazz, and minimalist classical music, often abandoning the traditional song format in favour of instrumental and ambient music.^[31] The term was first used to describe the band Bark Psychosis and their album Hex (1994), but was soon employed for bands such as Stereolab, Laika, Disco Inferno and Pram and other acts in America and Canada.^[31] Scottish group Mogwai were among some of the influential post-rock groups to arise at the turn of the 21st century.^[32]

Indie pop

Initially dubbed as 'C86' after the 1986 NME tape, and also known as "cutie", "shambling bands" and later as "twee pop",^[33][34] indie pop was characterised by jangling guitars, a love of sixties pop and often fey, innocent lyrics.^[35] It was also inspired by the DIY scene of punk and there was a thriving fanzine, label and club and gig circuit. Early bands included The Pastels, The Shop Assistants and Primal Scream. Scenes later developed in the United States particularly around labels such as K Records. Genres such as Riot Grrrl and bands as diverse as Nirvana, Manic Street Preachers, and Belle and Sebastian have all acknowledged its influence.

Britpop

Britpop emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s.^[28] The movement developed as a reaction against various musical and cultural trends in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly the grunge phenomenon from the United States.^[28] New British groups such as Suede and Blur launched the movement by positioning themselves as opposing musical forces, referencing British guitar music of the past and writing about uniquely British topics and concerns. These bands were soon joined by others including Oasis, Pulp, Supergrass and Elastica.^[28] Britpop groups brought British alternative rock into the mainstream and formed the backbone of a larger British cultural movement called Cool Britannia.^[36] Although its more popular bands were able to spread their commercial success overseas, especially to the United States, the movement largely fell apart by the end of the decade.^[28]

Post pop

After the decline of Britpop, British indie rock was kept alive by "post pop" bands including Radiohead, The Verve, Feeder, Stereophonics and Travis, who largely abandoned the elements of national and retro-60s culture.^[37][38] Recently British indie rock has experienced a resurgence. Like modern American alternative rock, many British indie bands such as Franz Ferdinand, The Libertines and Bloc Party draw influences from post-punk groups such as Joy Division, Wire, and Gang of Four. Other prominent independent rock bands in the 2000s include: Editors, The Fratellis, Placebo, Lostprophets, Razorlight, Keane, Kaiser Chiefs, The Kooks, Snow Patrol, Coldplay and Arctic Monkeys^[39] (the last being the most prominent act to owe their success to the use of internet social networking).

See also

• Music of the United Kingdom (1950s and 60s)
• Music of the United Kingdom (1970s)
• Music of the United Kingdom (1980s)

Notes