Newsflash from US musinewsyhack- Britpop is crap!!!!!!!!!!!

Damn, got the article URL wrong- it's here!!!!

I thought the article was pretty sound: lyrically and thematically, UK chartpop tends to be less interesting than US chartpop currently. (Exception: some garage). In terms of commercial-alternative (what the article is actually talking about) it's much of a muchness - the odd good hook, mostly bleh. I was expecting full-on xenophobia but it's Spin that rightly gets the brunt of the abuse, not the UK.

Spot on.

Why this situation? My theory - Britain now is operating under a siege mentality, a centralised and coddled society is watching all its institutions crumble (due to the great asset- stripping orgy of the 80s maybe? Who knows), and internal rot combined with the threat of cultural disappearance into globalisation is making them curl up in the foetal position under their urine- soaked bedsheets. (Funny Alan McGee made the 'bedwetters' comment, as it was Creation Records that was the first beneficiary of this situation. L. Gallagher - "Yanks want to see people stabbing themselves in the head, they get a sharp bunch like us and they don't get it." That's because there's nothing to get, arsehole. And sadly, they were the best of a bad bunch...)

I suppose in my case I'm into the retreat from the economic reality, but there you go. ;-) More to the point I'm more amused by said economic reality if such a distinction truly exists (I think Harris intentionally sells the UK short and makes out the US charts to be more grounded, but based on the insane [and insanely entertaining] new Jay-Z album, what on the one hand can be seen as said grounding can on the other hands be as hyperreal and fantastic as anything else). I suspect his stance can be boiled down to "our escapism is better because it's based on real things" -- a wonderfully bizarre contradiction but one that finally twists around the 'reality in, reality out' aesthetic that holds American music to be somehow 'truer' in spirit.

Hmm, I thought it was going well until the straw man tacticts of the last few paragraphs.

OK there was an occasional slide in to knee-jerk US isolationism such as "225 years since we severed ties with the British Empire" which is the sort of crass and ill-informed sniping that makes The Simpsons second rate. They might have mentioned how they saved our butts in the war too.

But mainly it said things about mainstream British rock that was accurate. I have no idea if US promoters are "genteel" or not. (Was that some sort of code for a less PC insult?) But if anybody in the US really is promoting Coldplay and Travis as something exciting then they deserve all the insults they get hurled at them.

But those last two paragraphs about how it was 'sophisticated art rock' UK corporate rock against 'vulgar' US pop looks like a deliberate misrepresentaion. Destiny's Child are not competing for the same audience as Radiohead - Radiohead compete with Linkin Park and Papa Roach...

I wish it were that simple though seeing Destiny's Child kick both Radiohead and Staind into obscurity would be pretty satisfying

I think Dave's reading rather too much into this, myself ...

Yeah. What the fuck are you on about, Mr Q?

britain = catatonic


USA = hebephrenic

I had to look that up! It describes perfectly most of what is popular in the US now (that I like, anyway...the rest is probably British (or quasi-British)). Slipknot vs. the Strokes. Hell, even the guy from Staind has these mannered facial tics when he sings, despite how lachrymose his songs are. The funny thing about Radiohead is they are sort of resolutely catatonic and hebephrenic at the same time, aren't they?

(BTW, I sort of like Travis...it's the sort of crafty thing no US band could ever pull off).

'BTW, I sort of like Travis...it's the sort of crafty thing no US band could ever pull off)'

Except Bread, a few years back, except they were good

...and the Eagles, but they sucked

"For all the Fab comparisons the Gallagher yobs encouraged, Oasis didn't really sound like the Beatles. No, what they offered was a gentrified notion of arena rock—unwieldy power ballads to inspire Bic-waving among folks who thought they'd outgrown Bon Jovi. When it comes right down to it, preferring Oasis to Matchbox Twenty is as blind an act of cultural chauvinism as preferring Tony Blair to Bill Clinton."

In a lazy way, this is all spot on.

DQ -- I mean now, obviously. Bread were more than a few years back by my timescale.

Oasis/Matchbox 20 = Lee Harvey Oswald/Timothy McVeigh

I'd pick less appealing criminals, myself.

"Music must give up the attempt to design itself as a picture of the good and virtuous, even if the picture is tragic. Instead it is to embody the idea that there no longer is any life."

Adorno pans the Strokes...

dave,

That comparison is not really fair to Oswald or McVeigh.

The reason I like the Strokes album so much is precisely that it embodies the idea that there no longer is any life. I've not heard a record so riven with doubt (self- and otherwise) in ages.

Wow- The Strokes as an example of form as content: The lack of formal innovation mirroring the lack of the vitality in the lyricist's life.

When your parents (or your publicists) name you Julian Casablancas, I think a lack of formal innovation is pretty much a given.

That doesn't sound like much fun to me, Tom.

the strokes are popular in the us? really? i have never heard mention of them outside of a british weekly. the college station her plays them but no one seems all that excited about it.

The writer clearly hasn't been looking at the UK album charts of late.Personally I used to feel secure in the knowledge that bands like Creed and Staind meant nothing in the UK,but now they actually have followings,and that really scares me.And I'm not even English.

The fun bit, DG, is that these songs full of hidden doubt are also full of un-hidden hooks and several of them are dead danceable too.

Tom - yeah! And they don't even have loops in them!

The best one does ho ho. At least I'm assuming that's a drum machine on the re-recording of "Hard To Explain". Disco direction for the second album! Get Ric Ocasek in to produce!

Interesting responses so far!!!!

Anyway, the reason I posted this article was because I felt there was something not quite right with it, even though I actually agree with a lot of it. It's a bit hard to put my finger on, but here goes...

OK, to be fair, as someone from the UK, an article from 2001 which says Oasis are a bit loutish, and that Coldplay and Travis are a little bit "safe" in musical terms, is hardly front page news!!! (Neither is the "Is UK music crapper than US music?" type arguments that have been appearing in one or two UK music titles.) Also, the bizarre indentification of the latter two as Britpop, (Which effectively kicked the bucket in 1998 in the UK) along with acts that are patently not even indie (David Gray) or British (The Corrs are from Republic of Ireland) is a little strange, and the US/UK tub- thumping is a little bit hokey. (OK, so we give the US Teletubbies and The Spice Girls. Sorry about that, US folks!!! Just give us the Strokes and the new Michael Jackson album, and we'll call it quits, OK?!??) And Radiohead = Britpop?!??!! I would have thought the fact that they've actually had massive success in the US automatically disqualifies them from such a label. :) But once one filters that out, there's still something up with the article...

Time to go out on a limb here- I'm not entirely sure this article is actually about the state of UK indie per se, as much as it is a criticism of the original Spin article hyping UK indie which is refers to... In other words, it's more US musinewsy journos commenting on each others work, and the criticism of UK indie (Or at least, the acts presented by Spin as UK indie) is a by-product. Colplay, Travis, Oasis et al get slated not so much because Keith Harris thinks they're crap, but because Spin featured them in a blaze of hype-o-rama- and Keith Harris thinks they're crap. And he doesn't like the sort of alt-rock hacks who continually hype up upteen "UK Invasion" type cover stories. (Fair enough- we need more of that type of opinions here in the UK as well...) Furthermore, the whole argument is viewed through US alt-rock journalist glasses, which means that only certain types of band (ie the UK equivalent of "alternative") get featured.

So, in general, I suspect that Keith Harris, in the process of indulging in a bit of journo politcs, has inadvertendly discovered that the UK indie scene is in a bit of shambles, which I don't think too many would disagree with. Whether he actually understands whats wrong with UK indie is another matter.

Shame he didn't actually try examining the sorry state of UK commercial pop tho, which as far as I'm concerned is the real story, which hardly anyone in the mainstream media seems to have covered weel enough, with only the Aaliyah article in the Guardian hinting at it... At the mo, I doubt we could even give the US another Spice Girls, never mind Beatles/Stones/Floyd/Radiohead/etc....

Old Fart!!!!!!

Ric Ocasek = secret godlike genius producer. Suicide, Bad Brains, and the surprisingly influential Weezer.

Re Brit Pop (not 'Britpop') - that's what I was getting at in the 'Oxide + Neutrino = new Pistols?' question

you've got to remember the perspective harris wrote from, which is that of typical US music listener. to anyone in the states who does not read the NME, britpop = pop music that comes from people who talk with british/irish/scottish accents, which all kind of sound alike to the uninitiated. or at least sound distinctly not american, which is the point. (i'm an american expat now living in london who was never an anglophile, and i do know the difference.)

so: in the states, Coldplay had a hit and Travis never did. Oasis had a few hits, but were never more than a curiosity; Blur popped up every few years with a song and Damon was cute.

Harris' point, for me, is this line:

"But certain media taste-makers—a cadre extending from college radio jocks to magazine editors, all of whom deplore the crass mass taste of their fellow citizens—apparently think that bands such as Travis do provide an "alternative," if you'll pardon that dated industry term. "

the problem is when these 'tastemakers' go overboard in their anglophilia, just to escape the crap that's taken over the US pop music landscape. Harris' last paragraph is a silly knee-jerk defense, but the rest of the piece makes sense from the perspective. as he writes:

"The Britsnobs are, in their tetchy and genteel fashion, trying to launch a counteroffensive to the glitz that rules the U.S. charts: discoid bubble gum, aggro-rock thud, and cash-proud hip-hop. In short, a need to counteract those aspects of American culture that the most culturally insecure Americans have always felt insecure about—that we're juvenile airheads, that we're violent thugs, that we're shallow nouveau consumerists."

a bit rude, but on the mark.

In which case what they're doing is EVEN WORSE. US pop should be the envy of the world right now and trying to neuter it with the likes of Coldplay is criminal. Be thankful O Americans that you've not got that new Embrace single, too.

The solution to all of this is ALCAZAR. Particularly the video.

The section quoted by Bucky reminds me very much of Jonathan Freedland's line that "Snobbish Americans are often Anglophiles": it is very nearly completely on the money, especially in the context Tom puts it in.

How many snobbish Americans do you know, Robin? I'd consider my parents snobbish, but they'd just as soon have England destroyed were it up to them.

I don't, but the man Freedland has enough experience to say such a thing, I would feel.

I don't know who Jonathan Freedland is, but anglophilic snobbishness is a very particular, minor sort of cultural snobbishness, that I would mostly associate with overeducated liberal types who live in the city (basically an insignificant proportion of the population here). My idea of the typical American snob is the overly patriotic, SUV driving doofus who likes watching golf, and hates England because they're the Ryder cup team that isn't America (sic).

yeah, but we're only talking about a very small subsection of american snobs: the kids working at their college radio stations and a handful of magazine editors. every station and 'zine has it's anglophile or two, and that's all it takes.

the yank snob SUV-drivin', soccer mom-types have nothing to do with the american perception of pop music.

There's anglophilia and anglophilia. WASPs worship of Shakespeare, the romantic poets etc. may be parodied on product like 'Frasier', but love of great cultural contributions does not automatically make one a slavish devotee of all things English/British. Much American culture wouldn't look out of place on the bottom of my shoe, but much of it is sublime and wonderful. It's not an all-or-nothing deal!

Yes, it's more US/UK idiot journo infighting, but then sustaining your existence by writing about possibly the most disposable of cultural products - pop music - isn't exactly a breeding ground for Pulitzer prize winners. And what the hell qualifies as UK indie anyway? The whole indie mentality can be summed up as obscurity=kudos, as frequently witnessed in student bars when hipsters attempt to show off their indie cool by being into bands you've never heard of....