Bastille

Yes Joni Mitchell and Neil Young are very much Canadian and Joni is the greatest singer songwriter of all time.

is that it?....

This week it is

We had Stone Roses but they don't count in the same way as Coldplay don't I'm purely talking about top 40 singles here not albums as there are plenty there

In terms of current music, I think I'd take the likes of Adele, Laura Marling, Mumford & Sons, James Blake, alt-J, Jessie Ware, Dua Lipa, Muse, Biffy Clyro, Disclosure, Chvrches etc. over the largely disposable offerings of Selena Gomez, Fifth Harmony and Iggy Azalea (the shining beacons of music the OP has alluded to).

i wouldnt count the stone roses as they are old... i want to know where the sno - erm , millennials new bright exciting bands are. and not those that are generic, or copies of earlier acts (not without adding something new like oasis did )

Personally I find the Stones' comeback music absolutely embarrassing. Somebody should tell them 1991 was 25 years ago.

From what I've seen of older music, I strongly believe this to be the case. It's like a lot of artists were liked because there was nothing else. We had few tv and few radio stations, so as you say the choice was limited and of course we we were going to like what we were force fed.

I wouldn't say that is fact. Michael Jackson's influence on music has been phenomenal, I would say he is one of the biggest influences on music videos, his videos were always exceptional and made the music industry realise how important they were for songs.

I think STEPS are crap, and yes I am a Lisa Scott-Lee fan. She might not have had tremendous success, but I liked her and a lot of people I know have liked her when I played her to them, before they realised it was her. I like the underdog, and it's not always about chart sales etc.

Yep, tt does tend to come down to personal taste. There's been plenty of great British music over the decades but far, far more great music from other nations; the most obvious one in the context of the UK and what UK audiences tend to consume, being the US. I listen to music from all decades and from a variety of other territories, whereas you're probably much more focused on the recent / pop market going by the artists you reference.

Take the USA for example; the population is around fives times that of the UK and over the decades, many of the styles which have influenced our popular music originated there. It stands to reason that they would beat us in a transatlantic musical battle but the UK has developed it's own unique genres too.

I don't agree about British rap being poor. I don't listen to Grime but I've been buying Hip Hop since the 80's and there's been some great UK product. A small drop in the ocean maybe, compared to the sheer amount of US activity but very worthy music nonetheless.

Because all the major record companies pay huge amounts of money to get their artists music played on the big radio stations.

This is why you end up with the same 10 songs played every hour on stations like Radio 1.

There is some excellent music out there right now waiting to be discovered. Chances are most of it will remain undiscovered so it's never going to make the charts. Not even the top 100.

So yes, radio stations are the reason why British music is so poor. The public will only buy what they hear/like.

For the record, I personally thought British music was at its absolute worst between 1998-2003 but maybe it was down to my age.

Blazin' Squad
Busted
Another Level
Dane Bowers
Westlife
A1
Northern Line
911
Billie Piper
Geri Halliwell
Gareth Gates

...to name but a few!!!

Yes, they were all popular but it made the UK charts a CHORE to follow at the time.

A bit later for me! 2003, 4 and 5 have to be the worst years ever in pop music. Frankie/Eamon, Crazy Frog, Tony Christie, an avalanche of Elvis hits (not that there's anything wrong with Elvis) - a truly grim period where everything just sounded tired, lacklustre or just plain unimaginative.

Shudder.

As somebody mentioned earlier, it's difficult to name a current band which isn't more or less copying bands fro the previous decade, which themselves often weak copies of bands from the Eighties and Nineties. Nearly everything now is verse, chorus, verse, chorus, etc and aimed at holding the short attention spans of modern young listeners. I can't think of any bands who deviate far from the generic indie-lite sound, except the metal and rap bands, which seem to be stuck in a time warp. I'm not suggesting a return to prog rock, but it would be nice to hear a few bands daring to break the mould. It's a sad state of affairs when the most adventurous bands are old timers such as PIL and Grinderman (I think that by now Nick Cave qualifies as an honorary Brit. Bowie is sadly no longer with us.

Yep!!!

More proof that public will buy anything if its force fed onto them.

Eamon/Frankie did well because it was "the song with the swearing in it".

Crazy Frog did well because 7 years olds thought it was the best thing they had seen all year.

Tony Christie did well because of Peter Kay.

So whilst they're not the greatest #1 singles from that year, I can (sadly) understand why they were successful.

Peter Andre - I Feel You
A1 - Same Old Brand New You
Westlife - Queen Of My Heart
Blazin' Squad - Crossroads

These songs had no redeeming feature. The only thing that sold these songs was the CD cover. My niece fell for this trap when she bought one of Westlife's singles on CD single and when I asked her why, she said "because they look well fit on the cover".

That's right, she bought a song because of the artwork!!!!!!!

Westlife definitely symbolise an awful point in UK music history. Who bought their music? They are the epitome of no substance IMO.

Don't think most of the American artists mentioned by the OP are much better than the British ones he/she mentioned.

As for Michael Jackson, why are people still listening to him, why are his songs still on the radio?

They don't play Gary Glitter or Rolf Harris or The Lost Prophets.

I think you're bang on the money, esp around new acts.

Record companies just don't want to take risks & the public seem to lap up bland crap.

Until that changes it'll be more of the same

utter nonsense.... the idea that we liked a few artists because there was lack of choice or exposure is completely wrong.

point 1 - we did NOT like an artist because they were the best of a bad bunch, we liked them because we liked them. those that didnt like them didnt buy their material.

point 2 - there was far greater variety in the past, there in mainstream let alone other niche areas. people say theres access to anything now which is true, but we created our own new vibrant styles - variety and originality ruled in the past.


over stated more like... especially on videos... people seem to imagine that because of the hyped thriller being the biggest selling vid ever, that jacko was responsible for music vids.

but creative music vids were going on long before jacko, and long after. the short film style thriller was, was not copied! vids generally stuck to the 3 minute concept and all but ignored jackos mini epic.

great music videos were created despite jacko not because of him.

I don't know how much Metal you hear but to say it's "stuck in a time warp" simply isn't true. Metal today is arguably one of the most diverse of all music genres and Prog is also in a very healthy state.

However it is certainly true there isn't much innovation in music these days, certainly in the mainstream, although I would say the ultra-conservatism of the major record labels is part of that.

How much success of certain acts of the present day is just due to them being hammered at you all the time because there are so many TV and radio stations playing exactly the same songs over and over again?


That is laughable - do you think there were only like 5 artists around in the 80s?? You would not be able to conceive of the richness and variety of music and radio shows around for those of us that grew up in those days. You could pick and choose whatever you liked and ignore anything you didn't. Nobody was "force fed" anything, unlike today where you can't even walk into a dentist's waiting room or a branch of Natwest without having some generic pop sludge thrown at you.

Totally you pick a certain radio show and have a good idea of what sort of stuff they would play even on Radio 1 daytime there was variation. Capital and commercial radio was much more dangerous and varied than the last twenty years where they play the same fifteen songs over and over

Even Atlantic 252 which was an early template for modern commercial radio lots of music and ads with bland identikit djs played rock along with its pop and rnb hits. And you heard songs there that no other station played,

Ok we didn't have DAB or barely even FM in Scotland but it was still better than now with radio station genres in ghettos

Wasn't around in the 80s and when I listen to it it all sounds dated to me. Don't get david Bowie nor Queen, in fact, especially Queen. A lot of their songs, in particular Bohemian Rhapsody, sound disjointed and lacking rhythm to me. But I just don't like old music, it may be a generation thing. having said that, there are obviously exceptions - mainly the American artists I mentioned. Maybe I should give them more of a chance. Freddie had pitchy vocals though, the music was better than the singing.

As for Michael Jackson and his influence on music videos, it don't even think Thriller is his best video, Billie Jean tops the list for me! Of course there were people before and after him, but he did have an influence on music videos.

Actually these days I would say it's a lot harder to stay at the top of the game for artists, due to the diversity of music and sheer number of artists around. They're always fighting to remain relevant.