Why do you have to tear down British rock? As an American, I can say wholeheartedly that British rock is kick@$$. Australian rock is kick@$$. Canadian rock is kick@$$. Ireland and New Zealand? You guessed it. German and Japanese rock? I don't understand the lyrics, but I do understand that electric guitar.
That is what everyone is doing to American rock, and to do so, they are literally rewriting history or straight up lying. And it would be one thing if the US was Canada (a country that has CanCon laws to keep a certain amount of American music off their airwaves), or if it wasn't the birthplace of Rock and roll, or if it didn't obviously produce the vast majority of the world's bands and musicians in any genre decade after decade, as if the US didn't essentially invent the entire modern musical landscape, all it's major genres, most of it's subgenres (as reflected on their accordant Wikipedia pages), and the seminal instrument it's played on - it would be one thing if people didn't imply American disinvolvement in music's evolution by, for example, accusing American bands of "ripping off" music from foreign bands and musicians who themselves were admittedly playing and copying American styles of music, after decades of admitted American cultural fever in Europe - it would be one thing if the US didn't so obviously produce the vast majority of the 90s big-ticket rock, hard rock, metal, and punk bands - it would be one thing if British people on this board weren't baldly lying about sales figures to claim that more British bands crossover to the American market than vice-versa, or that the USA doesn't have a self-sufficient music scene, or manufacture opinions that say everything British is better even when it's unremarkable "glam" music written by an American... So every country can have their rock music acknowledged and respected, especially Britain - but not the US, we have to tolerate endless disrespect, in every corner of the internet? British rock deserves to be torn down, needs to be torn down, because this atomic level of arrogance about it is, as we can see, propped up on lies, north-korea style censorship, historical revisionism, ignorance, and xenophobia. Foreign nationals who appropriate my culture's music, and then insult my culture, and then tell me that my culture did nothing, that it all sucks, and that they always did it better, don't deserve my respect.
Are you doing a performance piece, where you lift up a mirror and shove in the face of Britain? Cuz you could not sound more hypocritical.
Care to explain? Or just insult. This is a fact, not delusion: David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, etc, are British people playing American styles of music. Stone Temple Pilots, Blue Cheer, Hendrix, The Doors, Beach Boys, etc, are Americans playing American styles of music, as are Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Deftones, Pearl Jam... To accuse acclaimed American bands of "ripping off" a couple prominent British rock bands (while making sure to omit the many thousands of 60s or 70s American rock bands that existed) is silly and redundant and Anglocentric delusion.
"Hypocritical"? I'll repeat: This started with someone telling me that my explanation as to why Britpop wasn't popular in the US in the 90s, as per the title of the thread, was too "US-centric" - this is despite the fact that every ounce of musical discourse on the Internet, every musical discussion thread over-represents British musicians by +%1145 and under-represents American musicians, the inventors of "rock music", by a factor of -%658, at least. Let me ask you a serious question: would it be a good idea for the US market to establish "American content laws", like Canada, to keep the evidently obvious (according to you) incursion of British rock music out, and to bolster an American music market that you seem to think is lacking in quality entirely (...why are British people playing our music?) and not self-sufficient?
You are way too wrapped up in this, although I suspect that's a common refrain with nationalistic themes for you. Have a good evening.
I am responding to the obnoxious British nationalism present on the internet, not least in music forums. You want to force people to agree that British music is better, which is why you people have been petulantly tearing down every American band mentioned on this thread, which is why you've been attacking everyone who quotes favoritism for American music (even if they're not American), which is why you've been trying to ignore basic music history because you know you can't assign an objective value to British bands or musicians like you can American ones, who are simply always going to be more original and higher quality because they play music belonging to the culture they are already a part of and they have always been the chief innovators of new styles of music. What new instrument did the Brits create? What massive new genre did they introduce on that new instrument? NONE. In the Jazz age (1920s-70s), the Rock age (50s-2000s), and the Hip Hop age (1980s-) It's Americans who have dominated. Britain has a prolific music scene for a country of it's size and has produced some popular bands. This is a post-50s development, well after the US created most of the foundation for popular music and had already started innovating various subgenres, which just continued through the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and on. This thing where arrogant Eurocentrists get jealous of American hegemony and act entitled to credit or ownership of American culture is astonishingly normalized and utterly despicable. I propose, in return, Americans start taking credit for Orchestral music.
Sweet Mother-flipping jeebus, this thread definitely set someone off! I lived in London during the summer of 1996. As a young American intensely interested in British music from Madchester through Shoegaze through whatever Suede or early Verve were considered, I was excited when I first heard Supergrass and ‘What’s The Story Morning Glory?’. Something was going on. Of course when I got there, it was xenophobia and already felt like it was over. British music for British people. So why on God's green earth would that do any business in America? Who or why would anyone on this side of the pond give a ****? Loads of great stuff adjacent if you like music: Tiger, Super Furry Animals, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, The Cardigans, Pulp. But not much of it British, and even the British groups quickly distanced themselves from it. Any latent Anglophile tendencies I had were cured after that Summer…
Set someone off? The minute people started quoting explicit favoritism for either music scene (some Greek guy said "US 90s rock pisses all over UK 90s rock") an orgy of mirth was unleashed from the Brits and Anglophiles on this forum, and any further attempt to discuss the matter or American bands and musicians in particular was met with insults and the most obnoxious nationalistic chauvinism in the thread - I responded in kind. Let's stop it. This is of course so ironic, because it's all in a thread created by a British person who is asking why a genre called "Britpop" (pop being American in origin) wasn't popular in the US, a genre that had it's MSM breakthrough in part with a magazine title that read "Yanks Go Home" - you can watch YouTube documentaries right now in which 10 different Brits decry the perpetual American influence of music and culture, and a number of Brits themselves have written articles available on the internet that rightly point out - all the British musicians held up as superlative and original by Britpop musicians and users on here sounded like tons of American acts of their time and were directly, admittedly derivative of American music styles, to the point that it's legitimate mimicry (they sing in American accents, call themselves things like "The Nashville Teens", write lyrics about "Going to California", sing songs written by Americans, move to America, recruit American band members or producers...and yet American music sucks, isn't influential, is inferior). As we can see by the conciliatory, weak American responses on here, America has always been a xenophilic, self-deprecating nation that would never coin an ultra-patriotic "Ameripop" movement out of it's own cultural inferiority complex and insecurity.
Despite Canada's national content laws, their charts and airwaves are still dominated by American and British acts. Same thing with Australia. And you don't have to respect their opinions. I don't. paperhat's post is bull-loney. But I don't need to refute it. It's like I said before. All I need to do is tell the truth about American music and the US market. The number one country or R&B hit here is often bigger than the number one pop single in other markets. Alabama never topped the Billboard 200. They never hit the top ten of the Hot 100. And yet they are one of the top ten biggest selling US bands. As a mentioned previously, there's no British act that stands equal to Frank Sinatra or Webb Pierce or Jay-Z. Hip-hop is huge in the UK, but none of their rappers have crossed over to dominate the US market. We've got Enimen and Kanye, why would we need Stormzy or Dave? There's no British Miles Davis. There's no British Aretha Franklin. Heartland rock is as unique to the US as Britpop is to the UK. And still Bruce Springsteen has 12 UK number one albums. No one is erasing American music.
Their airwaves are overwhelmingly Canadian/American and Australian/American, with a few British acts thrown in. It's not about respecting opinions, it's the concerning number of Musos, Brits, and Anglophiles who have aggressively Anglocentric-nationalist worldviews that are utterly anti-factual and that totally warp the reality of music history and the media ecosystem of the modern era People are using Britain as the foil to the dominant American scene - which is taken for granted and seen as normative. They take it further still, though, and refuse to acknowledge the significance, influence, or even the presence of tens of American scenes, or thousands of American acts, whether they like them or not. They just want to say they're "dire" and redundantly accuse them of ripping off British musicians who played American music. There are British soul singers, I don't know why you'd claim there weren't? Heartland rock isn't that unique, Grunge is. Paisley Underground is. No Wave or Noise rock or Horror punk is. Psychedelic rock and Acid rock is.
I don’t know if you want to poke too much at the inferiority complex and insecurity thing… the typical American response would be “LOL WUT?” and “who are these bands?” Uh, key word being “typical”…
Those are insecure? That's a typical response from Americans on music boards? I have literally never seen it. In response to what bands? Also, the British/Canadian inferiority complexes are a meme all over the Internet. The easily offended Brit who's obsessed with Americans is a trope at this point, so stop deflecting. It's a very notable British inferiority complex/chip on the shoulder that Brits have about Americans, and when this is pointed out, they act like American's are writing snotty dismissals of British music online enough to be able to say "no u". No, typically Americans are quite xenophilic and complimentary of foreign cultures, and the opposite is true of British people - they like to tell people they invented everything and how special they are and how wrong everybody else is (then they'll call it "humor"), and they love to project this onto Americans, who they are deeply resentful of. Literally every Brit on this thread has already conformed to the stereotype of the chauvinistic Brit with a vein in their temple about America and Americans, constantly trying to one-up America, and every American on this thread has conformed to the stereotype of the weak, pathetic American who lets other nationalities abuse him and walk all over him. We're the only country not allowed a culture, even when other countries are allowed ours.
Didn't say that there are no British R&B singers. I said there are no British equivalent to Aretha Franklin. She had 12 number one albums and 20 number one singles on the Billboard R&B charts. Where's the British R&B singer that had 10 or even 5 R&B number ones? There isn't any.
It should have been locked down when that obnoxious Anglophile accused every notable American 90s band of being solely derivative of American-mimicking British musicians and when any British poster on this thread started dogpiling any comment in favor of the American music scene in general. It was obvious by that point that this was supposed to be one of those delusional British circle-jerks ("look how superior we are") - god forbid the facts disagree with the arrogance.
R and B, Rock, Jazz, Blues, Pop, Disco, House, Techno, are all uniquely American. All have been played to great success outside of America too.
That's not my point. You're busy tearing down British music when there's no need to. All I have to do is point our that there's no British Donna Summer; that there's no British Duke Ellington.
