Notes From the Underground: Pop in the UK 1979-1982

Abstract

This article will consider the ways in which some of the pop music produced in the late 1970s and early 1980s offered critical commentary upon Margaret Thatcher’s Britain from within a commercial context. Bands like the Jam and the Specials provided alternative, radical and sometimes ironic narratives that directly challenged those of the new ruling classes and the political ideology they sought to maintain. Although high profile, they carried the energy of the underground into the mainstream, using popular media forms to contest the morals and ideals that conservative society worshipped. Similarly, subcultural movements like the New Romantics, quickly elevated from the underground into mainstream popularity in the early months of Thatcher’s first term, celebrated plurality and difference and provided stylistic and creative resistance against the 1979 Conservative Election Manifesto that sought a solid return to a more traditional sense of values.