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)

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

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

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

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.’

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?

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Britpop

by John Williamson on Oct 06, 2008

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Britpop — Presentation Transcript