Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,7, University of Bonn (Institut für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Keltologie), language: English, abstract: People all over the world have been identifying with music for years. Music has a social quality that is across-the-board. But now only one nation is on focus. Every British decade had its own sound. Looking at the 1960s, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were dominating the music scene. Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath invented Heavy Metal in the 1970s and also Glam Rock with representatives like Queen and David Bowie started during the 1970s. The 80s as the climax of the Punk Rock movement headed by the Sex Pistols and the upcoming Indie-Rock scene represented by The Cure. Music, now and then, reflects its time, its history and all the changes that passes by. The question of this term paper is, „Does one identity of the British excist? Or are there maybe several identities? Or none?“ And is music the key to find any answers?

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1.3, University of Leipzig, language: English, abstract: This thesis evaluates the relation between British popular music and national identity. It concentrates on developments during the 1990s, bringing together all three popular genres of pop music during that period: indie rock, dance music and black music. Taking into account theoretical considerations on popular music, this thesis applies theories of collective identities in general and national identity in particular to Nineties pop. By analyzing an example of popular music media as well as selected music texts, the discourses within popular music culture are being compared to general discourses on questions of national identity within Great Britain.

Britpop was more than just a musical movement; it was a cultural phenomenon that defined the 1990s in the UK. Emerging in the early 1990s and peaking around the middle of the decade, Britpop was characterized by a revival of British music, fashion, and identity. This period saw a resurgence of guitar-based rock music, a celebration of British culture, and a confident assertion of national identity. The term "Britpop" itself reflects the fusion of British culture and popular music, signaling a return to the sounds and sensibilities of classic British rock. The Britpop era was marked by a sense of optimism and a rejection of the grunge movement that had dominated the early 1990s. While grunge was introspective and often melancholic, Britpop was outward-looking, celebratory, and distinctly British. The music was often characterized by jangly guitars, catchy hooks, and lyrics that referenced British life and culture. Bands like Oasis, Blur, Pulp, and Suede became household names, and their music became the soundtrack to a generation. Britpop was also closely associated with the cultural and political climate of the time. The early 1990s were a period of economic recovery in the UK, following the recession of the late 1980s. There was a renewed sense of national pride, and Britpop became a symbol of this renewed confidence. The movement coincided with the rise of "Cool Britannia," a period of cultural renaissance in the UK, and the election of Tony Blair's Labour government in 1997, which promised a new era of prosperity and progress. However, Britpop was not without its critics. Some saw it as a superficial and commercially driven movement, lacking the depth and innovation of previous musical eras. Others criticized its focus on British identity, arguing that it was exclusionary and nationalistic. Despite these criticisms, there is no denying the impact of Britpop on British culture and its lasting legacy in the music industry. As we explore the origins, key figures, and cultural significance of Britpop, it is important to understand the broader context in which it emerged. Britpop was not just about the music; it was a reflection of the social, political, and cultural changes taking place in the UK at the time. It was a movement that captured the spirit of a generation and left an indelible mark on British culture.

This book offers a major exploration of the social and cultural importance of popular music to contemporary celebrations of Britishness. Rather than providing a history of popular music or an itemization of indigenous musical qualities, it exposes the influential cultural and nationalist rhetoric around popular music and the dissemination of that rhetoric in various forms. Since the 1960s, popular music has surpassed literature to become the dominant signifier of modern British culture and identity. This position has been enforced in popular culture, literature, news and music media, political rhetoric -- and in much popular music itself, which has become increasingly self-conscious about the expectation that music both articulate and manifest the inherent values and identity of the modern nation. This study examines the implications of such practices and the various social and cultural values they construct and enforce. It identifies two dominant, conflicting constructions around popular music: music as the voice of an indigenous English ‘folk’, and music as the voice of a re-emergent British Empire. These constructions are not only contradictory but also exclusive, prescribing a social and musical identity for the nation that ignores its greater creative, national, and cultural diversity. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive critique of an extremely powerful discourse in England that today informs dominant formulations of English and British national identity, history, and culture.

Evening Standard Book of the Year. Observer Book of the Year. Guardian Book of the Year. Sunday Times Book of the Year. Telegraph Book of the Year. New Statesman Book of the Year. Herald Book of the Year. Mojo Book of the Year. Brett Anderson came from a world impossibly distant from rock star success, and in Coal Black Mornings he traces the journey that took him from a childhood as 'a snotty, sniffy, slightly maudlin sort of boy raised on Salad Cream and milky tea and cheap meat' to becoming founder and lead singer of Suede. Anderson grew up in Hayward's Heath on the grubby fringes of the Home Counties. As a teenager he clashed with his eccentric taxi-driving father (who would parade around their council house dressed as Lawrence of Arabia, air-conducting his favourite composers) and adored his beautiful, artistic mother. He brilliantly evokes the seventies, the suffocating discomfort of a very English kind of poverty and the burning need for escape that it breeds. Anderson charts the shabby romance of creativity as he travelled the tube in search of inspiration, fuelled by Marmite and nicotine, and Suede's rise from rehearsals in bedrooms, squats and pubs. And he catalogues the intense relationships that make and break bands as well as the devastating loss of his mother. Coal Black Mornings is profoundly moving, funny and intense - a book which stands alongside the most emotionally truthful of personal stories.

One of Oprah Daily's 20 Favorite Books of 2021 • Selected as one of Pitchfork's Best Music Books of the Year “One of the best books of its kind in decades.” —The Wall Street Journal An epic achievement and a huge delight, the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us, charting the way genres become communities. In Major Labels, Sanneh distills a career’s worth of knowledge about music and musicians into a brilliant and omnivorous reckoning with popular music—as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identities. He explains the history of slow jams, the genius of Shania Twain, and why rappers are always getting in trouble. Sanneh shows how these genres have been defined by the tension between mainstream and outsider, between authenticity and phoniness, between good and bad, right and wrong. Throughout, race is a powerful touchstone: just as there have always been Black audiences and white audiences, with more or less overlap depending on the moment, there has been Black music and white music, constantly mixing and separating. Sanneh debunks cherished myths, reappraises beloved heroes, and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness, arguing that sometimes, the best popular music isn’t transcendent. Songs express our grudges as well as our hopes, and they are motivated by greed as well as idealism; music is a powerful tool for human connection, but also for human antagonism. This is a book about the music everyone loves, the music everyone hates, and the decades-long argument over which is which. The opposite of a modest proposal, Major Labels pays in full.

This new study of British popular music shows how it engages with class in mythical ways that allow audiences to perform class-based identities. Case studies on folk rock, punk and indie rock show how this performance works and explore the implications for listeners and audiences.