What is British Popular Music?

British Popular Music can be defined in a number of ways which includes folk, jazz, pop and rock music. These forms of music have been particularly popular in Britain. However it has been argued that the impact on popular music disproportionates to the size of many countries. 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 a few times. Commercial music enjoyed by the people can be seen to originate in the 16th and 17th centuries with the arrival of the broadside ballad. These were sold cheaply and in great numbers until the 19th 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. By 1950 indigenous forms of British popular music was already giving way to the influence of American forms of music including jazz, swing and traditional pop, 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. Originally it 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. 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 of the hard rock genre. While pop music continued to dominate the singles charts, rock began to develop into diverse and creative sub-genres that characterised the form throughout the rest of the twentieth century. 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 sub-genres 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 sub-genres in heavy metal music. 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 sub-genres. In the middle years of the decade the influence of the pub rock and American punk rock movements 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. Rock and pop music in the 1980s built on the post punk and new wave movements, incorporating different sources of inspiration from sub-genres 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 synth pop. In the early years of the decade, while sub-genres 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. 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 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. 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. British Music Artists: Olly Murs One Direction Labrinth Emeli Sande Little Mix Robbie Williams Lana Del Rey Gabrielle Aplin Leona Lewis Jessie J Girls Aloud Tinie Tempah Oasis Calvin Harris Example Conor Maynard Ed Sheeran The Script You Me At Six The Wanted Adele Alex Clare Arctic Monkeys Coldplay Florence Welch Tinchy Stryder

IMAGES ASSOCIATED WITH BRITISH MUSIC

Top 10 British Artists/ Bands of All Time

10. LED ZEPPELIN

9. ELVIS COSTELLO

8. DAVID BOWIE

7. THE SEX PISTOLS

6. THE KINKS

5. THE CLASH

3. RADIOHEAD 4. THE WHO

1. THE BEATLES 2. THE ROLLING STONES