Britpop

Independent Music & Britpop

John Williamson

Popular Music History

17th April 2007

Lecture Content

• Background• Industrial re-organisation of independent music

in the U.K. the 1980s• National identity & ‘Englishness’• National roots• Types of ‘Englishness’ in pop music• Dominant characteristics of Englishness• Britpop : sexism & xenophobia• Conclusions / the end of Britpop?

Independence: Punk to Britpop• Punk bands may have been absorbed within

the major companies - but independent labels & distribution networks came out of punk

• Notions of independence were predomiant part of pop music discourse during 80s.

• Indie: ‘no genre had ever before taken its name from the form of industrial organisation behind it’ (Hesmondhalgh, 1997: 35)

Independence: Punk to Britpop• Small record labels seen as preferable to vertically

integrated majors. Creative autonomy.• Advent of independent charts - based on

distribution. • Aesthetic and Institutional politics• Oppositional approach - ‘significant challenges to

the commercial organisation of cultural production favoured by the majors’

• Other characteristics of post-punk / independents: whiteness / image/ videos

Independence: Punk to Britpop• BUT signs the many independents were

entrepreneurial rather than oppositional. • Virgin deal with EMI in 1992• Many of the independents went out of business -

e.g. Rough Trade• Others became absorbed by majors - e.g.

Creation, One Little Indian• Britpop - eventual appropriation of

independents / independence as marketing tool.

National Identity

• Can pop music be ‘quintessentially English’ (or British)?

• Albarn: ‘If you draw a line from the Kinks in the sixties, through The Jam and The Smiths to Blur in the nineties, it would define this thing called Englishness as well as anything’

• National identity is socially constructed - a specific type of English identity

Music and Identity

• Frith: ‘The experience of pop music is an experience of identity: in responding to a song we are drawn, haphazardly, into emotional alliances with the performers and the performer’s other fans’

• Frith: ‘The first reason. . We enjoy popualr music is because of its use in answering questions of identity: we use pop songs to create for ourselves a particular sort of self-definition, a place in society.’

• Identity as a process - songs, etc. help form social groups

Music and Identity

• Negus: identity is tied up in consumption rather than production of music

• Identity can also be seen as:• Interaction between artists, industry and audience• Process of inclusion and exclusion

• Choosing one identity is to reject another - Britpop as example of exclusion as well as inclusion

Britpop and National Identity

• National identity has been prominent in recent debates:• Devolution in Wales, Scotland, NI• Nationalism• Appropriation of by musicians

Britpop Roots: The 60s

• Little that was identifiably English in early rock’n’roll• The Beatles marketed in the States as British • Later work seen as more identifiably ‘English’• The Kinks:

• Altham: ‘the epitome of English rock’n’roll’• Albarn: ‘The Stones were pornographic. The Kinks

geographic.’

• Kinks & Small Faces set parameters for English pop:• White, male, importance of lyrics

Britpop Roots: The Kinks

• Unable to tour in America due to unions - studio based• Experimentation: ‘we had so many ways of doing

things’ (Dave Davies). Both lyrical themes & music.• ‘Sunny Afternoon’ - upper class accents:• ‘I didn’t want to sound American. I was very

conscious of sounding English.’• ‘Autumn Almanac’ - rejection of internationalism• ‘I like my football on a Saturday/ Roast beef on

Sundays, all right/ I go to Blackpool for my holidays/ Sit in the open sunlight.’

Britpop Roots: The Kinks

• Idealised Englishness of ‘The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society’

• ‘a culmination of all those years of being banned from America. I just wanted to do something English. It was a final stand.’ (R.Davies)

• Art school influence / influence on the Who


• Little evidence of English/ Britishness in glam/ prog/ pop acts of early 70s

• Quadrophenia - reflected on 60s mod subculture• Punk also seemed to have embedded Englishness:• Sex Pistols - Anarchy in the UK / God Save The

Queen• The Clash - English Civil War, This is England

• Savage: ‘a noisy revolt against the slow death and suffocation that is the emoitional experience of living in England’

Britpop: The 80s

• Some evidence of punk as xenophobic, nationalistic

• ‘British invasion’ of America• Post-punk acts - Elvis Costello, Ian Dury,

Madness• Locality & national identity - UB40, Ian Dury,

etc• Oi / Blood and Honour / Skrewdriver, etc.


• Flirtation with skinhead imagery / football casuals / Union Jack etc

• Finsbury Park concert: wrapped in flag, skinhead backdrop

• Kelly (NME): ‘Morrissey has always had a backward-looking and somewhat rose-tinted view of England/ Britain and has often chosen to express that view through association with various youth cults.’

• Morrissey: ‘the sight of streams of skinheads in nail varnish, it somehow represents the Britain I love.’

National Roots: The 90s

• World Cup 1990 - World in Motion• Suede -

• ‘an instant English classic, all decaying council blocks and weird sex’ (Spencer) / ‘in essence, the classic English band’ (NME)

• Seen as challenge to grunge & dance music of the time

• Anderson: (England) ‘is beautiful and maddening’• Ambivalence about marketing of group

National Roots: The 90s

• Blur ‘Park Life’ - ‘holds a mirror to the seamier side of English life as the Jam and Kinks did for earlier generations’ (MM)

• ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’ saw band reinvent themseleves in tradition of Kinks, etc

• Davies: ‘They’re in a tradition of English music, they’re part of what I call the British Movement.’• England = Britain• Realism / authenticity• Anti-technology

•Englishness

• Why the claims of Englishness in the early 90s?• ‘There was a long period in the 80s when people

were confused about what it meant to be English. . In the Thatcher years, things were changing so fats that nobody really understood what was happening.’ (Albarn)

• Change in political climate made expressions of Britishness/ Englishness easier.

• Pop music played a part in construction of mational identity in the 90s

•Englishness

• Cloonan suggests 5 types of Englishness:• Ambivalent Englishness• Overt Nationalism• Little Englishness• Leftist/ folk Englishness • Non-articulated Englishness

Characteristics of Englishness

• Urban: pop music centred on cities - contempt for rural / small towns

• Class: plebian articulation, often middle class backgrounds. Pop needs to speak in voice of the majority

• Redefinition: can be redefined - European? Global? New ‘mythical spaces’

Englishness v Britishness

• Conflation - ‘A very British pop’ vs. ‘classic English pop’

• Blur can be British - but Runrig, The Proclaimers as British?

• Union Jack rather than flag of St.George used - though attempts to reclaim both from right wing

• Exclusion of non-English - but other groups also excluded

Non-white English

• Non-white English artists rarely viewed in the same way as white artists - e.g. Asian Dub Foundation, Sway, Cornershop, etc. They are commenting on England, but rarely identified with it.

Women and Britpop

• Largely a male preserve• Some exceptions - Elastica, Echobelly,

Shampoo - but viewed not in terms of songwriting - rather sound, background or image.

• ‘Lad Culture’ / Loaded magazine - ‘traditional masculine values’ and reactionary views of women

Anti-Americanism

• CP in 1951 attacked American ‘commercial dance music’ and attack on British culture from ‘arrogant gum-chewers’

• Blur - example of ambivalence about USA - ‘Magic America’, ‘Look Inside America’

• Sullivan: ‘they revile the US as a place of shopping malls and charmless low-brow culture’

• Albarn: ‘My biggest hang-up with America is that it is a one-sided thing. They sell their culture wholesale to the rest of the world and they’re not interested in anyone else.’

Anti-Americanism

• Xenophobia or cultural critique• Difficulties of British acts in translating their

success at home into other markets.• ‘sharpness’ vs. ‘scruffiness’ of grunge

Modern Life is Rubbish

• Britpop / Englishness often has issues with technology

• Britpop came along at time of popularity of different forms of dance/ black music

• Refusal of modernity throughout lineage of British pop

• Sullivan: Blur ‘a throwback to the days when a band could write a song utilising verses and choruses and not get called Luddites’

• Harris: ‘balding techno musicians in boiler suits’

Modern Life is Rubbish

• Nostalgia is integral to English pop• Kohn: ‘being sentimental, nostalgic and easy-

going’ (on Madness, 1983)• Davies: song were ‘nostalgic in that they were

about an England that probably never existed in the first place.’

• Nostalgia excludes those who cannot remember, but also those who have arrived subsequently.

The End of Britpop / Cool Britannia?• Bands moved on, record labels lost interest• Initial surge in record sales / short-term boost

for UK record & concert industry• Reaction to media hype over New Labour and

some of the artists (chart battle etc) / Britpop as media creation

• Decline in overall sales, magazines / media outlets etc.

• BUT notions of Englishness/ Britishness have not gone away

The End of Britpop / Cool Britannia?• In early 2000s, The Libertines emerged on re-

constituted Rough Trade label.• ‘One of the greatest achievements of The

Libertines was to articulate this yearning for a maverick Englishness without a breath of jingoism or racism’ (Kitty Empire, Observer, 7 May 2006)

• Carl Barat: ‘No-one gives a fuck about the values I would die for.’

• Libertines heavily involved with Love Music Hate Racism

The End of Britpop / Cool Britannia?• Doherty: ‘I fall in love with Britain every day,

with bridges, buses, blue skies . .but it’s a brutal world. Man’• “I don’t feel myself to be representative of a general

feeling of Englishness. I’m interested in William Blake. In the same way that I immersed myself in the Smiths, I did the same with lots of aspects of English culture. I was obsessed with certain writers, certain styles of film. Those kitchen sink films like Billy Liar, hit me right in the heart. They were about a pride, a dignity and a respect for people who you feel you belong with a community and a mutual respect.’

•The End of Britpop / Cool Britannia?• Cycle of interest in notions of British/

Englishness in media. Current revival?• Blair: ‘the Google generation has moved

beyond the idea of 9 to 5, closed on weekends and bank holidays. Today’s technology is profoundly empowering.’

• Another reaction to technology & US cultural imperialism - or is is hankering after the past increasingly anachronistic?

•Conclusions

• Notions of Britishness/ Englishness are contested when they enter pop music

• Britpop as media creation• Xenophobia / Small mindedness - but also brought

important issues of national identity to the fore• Pop does not cause these phenomena, but can

underpin them• Reaction to political climate - Tories, globalisation, etc• Industrial changes• Was ‘Britpop’ a passing phase or part of a cycle?

Britpop

Technology

Transcript of Britpop