Missing Links: Britpop Traces, 1970 - 1980

Abstract

A period often referred to in the historical lineage of Britpop, yet not documented in detail, consists of the years between 1969, by which time the British invasion had lost momentum, through to the early 1980s and the emergence of groups such as the Smiths, the La’s, Ride and the Stone Roses (typically regarded as forerunners of Britpop). This period was characterized by a succession of performers whose music was also informed by a heavily articulated sense of Englishness – sometimes quite subconsciously. In many cases, the influence of such artists can also arguably be heard in Britpop. During the early to mid-1970s, a key example was Slade (whom leading Britpop group Oasis went on to cite as a primary influence). During the mid-1970s, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel purveyed a mockney accent and musical eclecticism that bridged the gap between the likes of the Small Faces and Blur while imprinting a local distinctiveness on English pop during a period when many British artists pursued a transatlantic sound and audience. In the late 1970s, post-punk and new wave artists like the Jam, XTC and the Buzzcocks imprinted their music with lyrical qualities that bespoke a provincial Englishness – which in XTC’s case would later develop, as with the Beatles, into a studio-based musical and lyrical collage of self-consciously selected cultural referents bound up with ‘little’ England. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, bands such as Madness and Squeeze continued to engage with aspects of mundane, everyday English life in their songcraft.