British popular music, popular culture and exclusivity

Abstract

This chapter explores some of the ways in which popular music, within the larger arena of popular culture, is mediated, used and experienced, focusing particularly on the rise and fall of Britpop in the final decade of the twentieth century. Not least I am concerned with the ways in which the history of popular music is used to give credibility to such national sentiments as 'Cool Britannia', why such a history is selective in its choice of representative events, and the ways in which these relate to who is included and who is excluded from the sentiments associated with the national flag. It is no real surprise, for example, to find that the guitarled bands of 1990s Britpop are predominantly male - how many British women lead guitarists can most people name? Nor is it surprising to hear the influence of such iconic bands as the Beatles, the Kinks, the Small Faces and the Smiths. If, as the argument goes, Britpop was a deliberate attempt to oust grunge and reinstate Britishness into rock, then such reference points are significant in establishing a recognisable musical identity. The relationship between musical family trees and their relationship to genre and gender is explored further in a brief discussion of Glastonbury's 2007 headline acts, Arctic Monkeys and Bjork, the Who and Shirley Bassey, so raising the question of how popular music functions ideologically and, more specifically, why the everyday reporting of British popular culture resonates with the need to explore and interrogate its often hidden agendas.