UK Government call pop-export crisis summit

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THE Government has called a top-level meeting in an effort to reverse a dramatic slump in the popularity of British pop artists in the $10 billion (£6.86 billion)US market.....

However, American critics have sneered at the idea, blaming the British industy for producing parochial rock bands and manufactured pop pap.

Full article in The Times

Say you were invited as a 'knowledgable pop consumer' what would you recommend?

― stevo, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

THE NEW PULP ALBUM and the new marrianne faithful

― anthony, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

So Dido's the answer? God I hope not - one's enough thanks.

Ignoring Britpop for the time being, isn't US pop just as parochial? It's only seen as universal by Americans.

― Michael Dieter, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

why is there more US pop in UK charts than UK pop in US charts?

nb this may not be true

― Josh, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Hip-hop in particular has always consistently struck me as specifically US-based - money, individualism, the american dream, etc.

Are these values global? Or is it that this music is just being consumed differently in other countries?

― Michael Dieter, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I wonder. Is it because the underground dance of the US eg. RnB / Hip Hop has crossed over into the mainstream. Hence US pop acts are now being produced by the cutting edge producers like Timbaland, Neptunes etc.

Whereas in the UK, the innovative dance producers don't work in the pop genre or produce pop musicians?

Did we need Kylie produced by Squarepusher? Billie by Fatboy Slim?

Ok these are out of date. Contemporary suggestions?

― phil, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

But is it just the 'sound' of UK releases? i.e. the production?

I kind of think it would have to be something a bit more complex.

And didn't Kylie just have her first ever US hit with Can't Get You Out of Head' anyway? People read this one along a kind of tenuous post-9/11 link.

Maybe UK pop just has to evolve to a point where it is culturally 'speaking' to a US market...

― Michael Dieter, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'locomotion' was in the top 40 wasn't it?

― Josh, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe they're looking at things the wrong way and the UK industry should strengthen presence in other markets instead. The USA now apparently rules the world so everybody else has a duty to oppose it.

― dave q, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Why is this only question of how well UK pop is doing in the US? How is it doing in continental Europe, for example? If it's doing equally bad over there, the matter of "American cultural values" standing in the way, becomes a whole lot less pertinent, surely?

― JoB, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Dave Q is regrettably right. I used to decry underground American anglophilia back in the eighties but the present fact is that intelligent stuff has a chance on the U.K charts but not in the U.S. U.S. marketing in its infinite widsom has elected to market only to pre-teens, the adult market being less buy-it-all and therefore less immediately profitable.

― John Darnielle, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Americans like rubbish music. Britons should take pride that their music has not crossed the atlantic.

― DV, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

crap taste is pretty universal, i would not say americans have cornered the market on it.

it is a cycle, exactly which uk acts should be dominating the US now? what are the egregious examples of a brilliant artist being overlooked? this whole idea that americans only buy what the wiley corporations market at them is pretty naive, if that were true then vivendi would not be struggling like it is, sony would not be looking to unload their entertainment group, record sales would not be going down.

― keith, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Cultural imperialism, the US colonizing the hearts and art of the UK -- what a load of crap. Nothing is created in a void and there will will always be an exchange between the two. Moreover, the objective of listening should never be the country of origin, but the quality of the work itself -- does it really matter if its a crappy UK band or a crappy US band? Crap is crap, and both have musically hitched their wagons to the same star mainstreamwise. If anything, the clash of cultures always makes things interesting and no culture has hever swallowed US culture whole -- a transformation and adaptation always takes place -- sometimes to even interesting effects. No culture is ever static. And no government should ever fuck with art or culture (no matter how slight or terrible you might think that art or culutre is) on a economic or choice scale. Just remember: the war is not what one country produces. The War is always between Art and Products -- don't be sidetracked by phantom issues. Dig up what matters no matter what's origin, be it Kenya bands playing Appalachian fiddle tunes to kick ass effect in the 20's or Beattles claiming and taking Buddy Holly riffs for their own, transforming them into something else.

― Jack Cole, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

if that were true then vivendi would not be struggling like it is, sony would not be looking to unload their entertainment group, record sales would not be going down.

ie America isn't just buying less British pop, but buying less Pop [period]

― Keiko, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I used to decry underground American anglophilia back in the eighties but the present fact is that intelligent stuff has a chance on the U.K charts but not in the U.S. U.S. marketing in its infinite widsom has elected to market only to pre-teens, the adult market being less buy-it-all and therefore less immediately profitable.

I agree with you that a lot of the popular music in the US is stupid and is marketed towards kids, but why wouldn't that be the case in the UK as well? Hasn't music always been marketed more towards younger consumers, or did MTV drag the average age that the record companies market to down by a lot, and thus drag down the intelligence of the music being played?

Is there not as much pay-for-play in the UK, which would allow the more intelligent music a chance at doing better? The pay-for-play system here has recently taken a lot of the blame for the miserable state of the quality of popular music by making record companies want to only focus on 4 or 5 really big artists. I just hope that the UK industry doesn't decide that their answer is to start really copying that system.

― lyra in seattle, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

There is no doubt a ton of pay for play here, it's just that play matters a little less, and UK airplay is in a slightly healthier state cos of two factors:

- the UK charts are based purely on sales and not at all on airplay. So an A-Listed record can flop and an unlisted record can triumph - it doesn't happen as often as some people would like, but it happens.

- the UK's two largest pop music stations are state-owned, and in return for public money have a remit which forces them to differentiate their output from commercial radio. How much they actually do this is arguable - in my opinion Radio 1 (one of the state-owned stations) certainly plays a much greater role in ensuring the flow of new music to the public ear than people who complain about pop radio like to acknowledge.

So the result is there's less incentive for record companies to try and buy off UK radio because it's (slightly) more difficult and (slightly) less effective.

― Tom, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Sometimes, a strange train of thought gets kicked off. There's a post here from Jack Cole. I was thinking of top Brit acts that America has ignored. For me, the Fall are one of the UK's crowning glories. They had a single, long, long ago, called How I Wrote Elastic Man, though MES sings 'Plastic Man'. Plastic Man was a comic book superhero created and originally written by... Jack Cole.

This may not be the most useful contribution to this debate. I'll say what I've said elsewhere on ILX: I don't think that success in America should be seen as any mark of quality, and I don't care about the commercial matters.

― Martin Skidmore, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I always thought the lyrics to "elastic man" were a play on "pictures of matchstick men" by the OG brit-floppers Status Quo.

I wonder if there were furrowed brows and fact-finding missions when the mighty Quo failed to plant the union jack up billboard's ass.

― fritz, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

thinking about it ... I totally blame Pop Idol

― phil, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Great- I hear that they're ex porting Pop Idol to the US this year.

― lyra in seattle, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Outsider's view: The singles charts in the US are largely weighted towards teen tastes. The UK is good at producing crappy Steps-ish kiddie pop and crappy Coldplay-ish grown-up pop, but not teenpop: someone like Billie, when she was selling, was closer to kiddie pop, "do you have a boyfriend" rather than "dance up on me". If the Brit music industry wants to export, all they have to do is realise that teenagers do have sex, or at least they do in warm countries.

― B-Rad, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The Fall is a good example of how the exchange between cultures is always happening underneath the surface, even if it doesn't seem apparent to said purchasers of Pavement records or what have you. Isn't that really what's most important? I mean, really, the Tops Of the Pops are just as terrible as the Billboard Hot 100 -- let us embrace the fact that what humanity has in common is a taste for tripe, not matter what a person's creed, national origin or sexual preference is. Besides, I'm glad Britain has Madonna now -- good riddance.

Besides, as already mentioned, American radio and British radio really aren't very comparable due to Government involvement (be it the US selling the airwaves to the highest bidder or state control, both less than desirable methods).

― Jack Cole, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If Americans aren't bright enough to bow down before the excellence of Chesney Hawkes and Robbie Williams they deserve to listen to Outkast.

― J Blount, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

dOOd -- if only the Brits had invented nu-metal first! They need to improve their industrial espionage skills and be on the tip for the next big thing built by American Media Factories = bluegrass/hip- hop fusion.

― Jack Cole, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

But they did! See "Second Edition"!

― J Blount, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Jack - the BBC is state *funded* but has never been state-controlled (the aspects of its output that governments have tried to manipulate are the news and current affairs, not the music radio). A big difference.

― Robin Carmody, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The best british stuff is the stuff which wends its way onto the charts rather than intially seems to BELONG there. Cf. R Freaks Electric

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 27 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"If the Brit music industry wants to export, all they have to do is realise that teenagers do have sex, or at least they do in warm countries." - the best analysis I've seen yet.

― J Blount, Tuesday, 28 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I've always wondered why it's mattered so much to British acts to break through in America. Is it the notion of following in the footsteps of the Beatles or the greater financial payoff or are American groupies hotter than British groupies? This desire doesn't seem to flow both ways, I can think of dozens of Britacts whose lack of success in America has been a concern for them, but I can't think of any American acts who have really cared whether they were charting in the UK, so long as they were selling at home. Indeed the whole notion of "we're really big in (insert foreign country here)" is a joke here. I can tell you that Bush weren't half as concerned over tanking in the UK in their heyday as R.E.M. were about "Reveal" tanking stateside.

― J Blount, Tuesday, 28 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Not to be anglophobic, but perhaps the british need to start making interesting records for a change. That is a very blunt thing to say, but it has been a long time since I have felt the overwhelming need to buy a british rock record. Is it because of the business, or is it just because there are no incredible Britrock bands at the moment?

My musical diet is mainly electronic, but I would still buy a White Stripes record. I am even thinking about buying a Hives record, but there is virutually nothing coming out of the UK that even slightly interests me. And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead is the only UK act in recent memory that has had a single that has grabbed me in the slightest. I do a radio show and I listen to the britpop fanatic DJ before me play all the latest stuff coming out of the UK, and I am shocked by the blandness of it all.

The UK needs to start making good rock records again. Government intervention will not help in the least unless the product is salesworthy in the first place. It has been a long while since I have heard anything that makes me feel the desire to part with 15 bucks.

― mt, Tuesday, 28 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Also, it should be noted I love old britrock: Wire, The Fall, Pistols, Joy Division, Roxy Music...

I like the Shoegazer records as well, it is just that there really has not been anything noteworthy since Britpop.

― mt, Tuesday, 28 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead are from Austin, Texas, actually.

― lyra in seattle, Tuesday, 28 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

duh! sorry I just assumed that any band who has a singer with teeth that bad must have come from England.

― mt, Tuesday, 28 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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