Music of the United Kingdom (1990s-2000s)

In the early 1990s, American grunge bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam helped inspire the British alternative rock scene. By the middle of the decade, the British charts were dominated by Britpop, a melding of British rock and roll forms from the last 30 years. Bands such as Blur, Suede, Oasis and Pulp helped lead this charge. The explosion of boy bands and girl bands also was significant in the pop scene. From the pioneering rise of Take That to the emergence of the Spice Girls, these kinds of bands had great commercial success throughout the decade, with the latter becoming one of the biggest British music exports of all time, selling in excess of 55 million records worldwide; excluding their third studio album Forever and their Greatest Hits Album, giving them over 110 million records sold. With the Spice Girls' combined singles sales; a record of 148 million records were sold from 1996-2008. On an international scale like the Spice Girls, Leona Lewis has affected the world with her music. After becoming the first female to win The X Factor, Lewis released her debut single, A Moment Like This which broke a world record after it was downloaded over 50,000 times within 30 minutes. Also with her debut album "Spirit" and international chart topping hit "Bleeding Love", Lewis brought British music on an international level. As the audience for electronica, techno and other forms of electronic dance music matured, various acts topped the charts in the middle of the decade, such as Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Massive Attack and Paul Oakenfold. These music genres fused and mutated into dozens of subgenres, including drum and bass, trance, house and trip hop. In the late 1990s and into the 2000s, melodic British rock groups such as Radiohead and Coldplay achieved great critical and commercial success.

Neo soul

In the early 1990s, a new wave of soul acts emerged from the United Kingdom, drawing on 1980s pioneers such as Sade. Popular neo soul acts included Soul II Soul, Lisa Stansfield, Brand New Heavies, Mica Paris, Cathy Dennis and Caron Wheeler. The Brand New Heavies' 1970s-style funk-soul was perhaps the most influential neo soul act, paralleling and influencing the rise of American neo soul artists such as Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige and D'Angelo.

Dance music

In the early 1990s, many raves continued to be organized, despite their illegality, and legal dance gatherings also occurred. Dance music saw more exposure at rock music festivals in Glastonbury and Reading. The tension caused by police attention and the increase of harder music at raves caused many dance music fans to return to legal night clubs, where rave music had given way to progressive house. Other clubs emerged to play the ever-splintering genres associated with the house music and rave scene, including hardcore techno, downtempo and trance. Recorded artists further split the scene into subgenres, taking influences from across the musical spectrum. In the course of a few years, genres such as hardcore arose, only to diverge into subgenres such as drum and bass and happy hardcore.

Drum and Bass

Until the 1990s, the British dance scene included countless adaptations of American forms of acid house, techno, rare groove and other electronic music, and there was no distinctively British dance genre. The 1990s saw the development of drum and bass, which originated in East London and Bristol. Drum and bass is an extension of rock and roll's breakbeat heritage, and is often compared to hip hop. Unlike hip hop, drum and bass uses beats in a much looser, more malleable fashion, sometimes creating polyrhythmic compositions. Drum and bass has incorporated beats and rhythms from calypso, dub and ragga, and led to the creation of ragga jungle. Other subgenres of drum and bass, included darkstep and hardstep, both of which attempted to maintain a more passionate and intense sound than the pop gimmicks of mainstream drum and bass.

Trip hop (Bristol Sound)

Trip hop (also known as the Bristol Sound) is a term coined by United Kingdom dance magazine "Mixmag", to describe a musical trend in the mid-1990s. Trip hop is downtempo electronic music that grew out of England's hip hop and house scenes. It is a fusion of breakbeat with jazz, funk, downtempo, soul and hip hop. Trip hop used sampled drum breaks with psychotropic soundscapes and few or no vocals. Notable trip hop artists include Massive Attack, Portishead, DJ Shadow, Tricky, Ruby, Howie B, Morcheeba and Glideascope. A more recent trip hop artist is Jem. Trip hop arose around the time of the 1992 release of Massive Attack's album "Blue Lines." The Massive Attack song "Unfinished Sympathy" typifies genre, and has been voted the best song of all time by BBC Radio 1, NME, MTV2 and other broadcasters. Salon magazine has said that "Trip-hop and its offshoots in this country prove once more that lively ears and lots of inexpensive electronic equipment can forge, however briefly, an international community of taste." [http://www.salon.com/12nov1995/reviews/triphop.html]

Jamaican music

The 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of "Saxon" DJs from Wood Green, North London, including Peter King and Smiley Culture. Later in the 1990s, fusions with hip hop became popular, led by London Posse and the crossover star Apache Indian. A techno fusion with reggae called jungle became popular among a new generations of Jamaican-Brits.

Indian music

The 1980s saw fusions of Punjabi South Asian origin with Western/black dance music in the United Kingdom, such as Apache Indian's bhangramuffin fusion of Bhangra and raggamuffin. In the UK, Bhangra has been called 'Asian music for Asians.' [Citation
last = Sharma
first = Sanjay
last2 = Hutnyk
first2 = John
last3 = Sharma
first3 = Ashwani
title = Disorienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Dance Music
chapter = 2
title = "Noisy Asians or 'Asian Noise'?"
place = London
publisher = Zed Books
year = 1996] The earliest Bhangra bands included Alaap and Heera. More recent groups include Achanak and XLNC. The fusion of West and South Asian music, according to the artists, has not been one way. In "'Noisy Asians' or 'Asian Noise'?" Sanjay Sharma while interviewing members of Hustlers HC, they state that in Reggae there is a "bhangara" rhythm. [Citation
last = Sharma
first = Sanjay
last2 = Hutnyk
first2 = John
last3 = Sharma
first3 = Ashwani
title = Disorienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Dance Music
chapter = 2
title = "Noisy Asians or 'Asian Noise'?"
place = London
publisher = Zed Books
year = 1996] [http://www.punjabisongs.com/music/ Bhangra songs including XLNC, Achaak] Mainstream success continued to build as prominent night clubs, record labels and the British pop charts saw major South Asian influence, culminating in Apache Indian's 1994 presentation on BBC Radio 1. That same year, Outcaste Records released the album "Migration" 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.

British alternative rock since the 1990s

Early in the 1990s, shoegazing was the most popular genre of British alternative rock. My Bloody Valentine's 1991 album "Loveless" is often considered the pinnacle of shoegazing. That same year, Primal Scream released "Screamadelica", combining rock inspired by The Rolling Stones with dance and house music production techniques. "Screamadelica" was a critical and commercial success, opening the way for the 1990s house-rock-hip hop-techno fusion bands such as Aphex Twin, Portishead and Massive Attack. Madchester and shoegazing had a wide enough audience that the British music trade magazines focused on them, even as both scenes were waning.

Suede played guitar-based music that drew on The Smiths and 1970s glam rock performers such as David Bowie. The band released a series of singles and then the album "Suede", the fastest-selling debut album in British history. Blur was the most popular band to emerge in the wake of Suede's rise to prominence. The band already had found an audience with 1993's "Modern Life Is Rubbish", and they made a commercial and critical breakthrough with 1994's "Parklife". "Parklife" featured influences from New Wave, synth and jangle pop, as well as psychedelic and glam rock. 1994 also saw the Manchester-based Oasis begin to receive attention in the British press. Skyrocketing from critical excitement to mainstream superstardom in a matter of months, Oasis' "Definitely Maybe" unseated Suede as the fastest-selling debut in history, although many preferred Blur's style. Oasis became seen as rivals to Blur and the two defined what came to be known as Britpop. Britpop is characterized by influences from the 1960s and 1970s, catchy songs and glamour. Many of the previous decade's biggest cult bands found mainstream success in the wake of Blur and Oasis and bands such as The Boo Radleys, Pulp, Elastica and Supergrass experienced commercial success.

2000s

The 2000s have been characterized by the phenomenal growth in the popularity of rap/hip hop and contemporary R&B. Artists such as Eminem, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, Usher and Kanye West typify this. American rap and hip hop influence British artists, who fused it with urban music genres such as garage to create grime. Grime originated in East London, and examples of grime artists are Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Kano and Lady Sovereign. Prominent rock bands in the 2000s include: The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Editors, The Fratellis, Muse, Keane and Kaiser Chiefs.

ee also

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

Notes