The British have given us much, from tea and crumpets, to Winston Churchill, to advanced naval technology, but their most conspicuous gratuity has been their pop music. Consistently, British music dominates pop music from other countries without ever seeming like they’re trying. Whether it comes to pure song craft, sonic innovation, or showmanship, the British always seem to know exactly about the modes of pop music. It’s not our intention to start a war of nations over who has the best music, and this is why our article is not a “Top 10 Music Countries”. Regardless of the caution in these preliminary remarks though, we do expect a certain amount of criticism from the most obvious omission. We asked ourselves what British music we listen to and enjoy the most and this became our list. If we were to base our list on more popular guidelines this omission would not be made, but as this article is focused on what we listen to the most, we could only answer honestly by what we listen to day to day. Here then are Old-Wizard’s top ten British bands of all time.
10. The Stone Roses
The Stone Roses first album was so good that they had to be included in the “Top 10 British Bands of All Time” list, regardless of their work before or after. The Stone Roses debut album sounds as good today as it did when it was released in the cusp of the new decade of the 90’s. John Squire’s guitar playing is still it’s own sound taking the best of the 60’s, 70’s and even calypso guitar sound and meshing it into a wash of color and dint. Reni’s drum playing on the record is still some of the most sophisticated shuffles one can hear on a modern CD. Add to this Mani’s funk bass playing and Ian Brown’s utter conviction in vocal delivery and the listener was given one the best gifts in pop music. Song’s like “Elephant Stone” and “I Wanna be Adored” became staples for the music listener who was interested in hearing great musicianship combined with confident songwriting. Songs like “Bye Bye Badman” and “She Bang’s the Drums” persuaded the listener that the timeless quality in what they were hearing would not be heard again for a long time to come. Beyond their debut album was “Second Coming” which was a great album in it’s own right embodying quality songwriting in “Ten Story Love Song” and “Tears”, while still being in tune to their groove in “Begging You”. After “Second Coming”, The Stone Roses abandoned to pursue their own solo careers which were all successful and fine sounding, but when one listened back to their debut album, one is filled with forlornness as what once was and will probably never be again. It’s with this in mind that The Stone Roses are owed their proper place in pop music history, sheerly on the power of their first album.
The Kinks marked the first time in British music where jejune modern life became one of it’s themes. The Kinks consistent caricatures of modern life in London would go on to influence hundreds of bands who wanted to write something besides love songs. After their initial success of “You really got me” and “All day and all of the night”, they went on to create some of the most sophisticated music for the time. It was in the late 60’s that they hit their stride with a string of memorable singles such as “Waterloo Sunset” which embodied the apathetic easiness better than any song before. In 1968 when they released “The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society”, they had finally been given the high rank in British pop that they deserved. What was a 2 sided theme album, was full of valent songwriting full of catchy choruses and jumpy rhythms. Listen to “Starstruck” just once and you will have the chorus in your head for months. Nowhere was the apathetic London attitude more noticeable than on the title track for the album. Complete with candy-coated back up vocals and clever lyrics only known to Ray Davies at the time, “The Village Green Preservation Society” would go down as one of the greatest songs of all time. The Kinks output in the 70’s would tend on the side of larger concept albums that were too theatrical compared to the relative ease in which jocular social commentary came to the Kinks in the 60s. What The Kinks will be remembered for are songs like “Lola”, “Ape Man” and “Autumn Almanac” which were songs that never took themselves too seriously but always pierced the skin of larger social themes. It’s hard to think of a band more British than the Kinks, and it’s hard to think of a songwriter as acute on modern life than Ray Davies. It would be erroneous to not include them on a “Top Ten British Bands of All Time” list.
8. Suede
Suede formed in the early 90’s in London with a love for The Smiths and T-Rex. They took these influences though and made them into something bigger and more dramatic. Suede’s debut album was full of the type of subtle sadist references that would make affluent private schoolers blush. “Animal Nitrate” and “The Drowners” were full of the trampy riffs perfected in Marc Bolan’s mid 70’s work. The conspicuously androgynous Brett Anderson fantasized about the most tragic of romantic moments creating a more a realistic vision of modern romance. Their second album “Dog Man Star” saw them reach the height of pop music with it’s utter euphony in delivery. “We are The Pigs” is a call to arms for a nuclear night in flames. While everyone is inside fearing their impending doom, Brett Anderson and his crew of flash boys are dancing on the streets watching everything burn. Bernard Butlers guitar work on this album is superb filling chorus’s with lines as melodic as Brett Andersons obvious penchant for chorus deliveries. The amount of classic moments on Dog Man Star is staggering. Just listen to “The Wild Ones”, “New Generation” and “This Hollywood Life”, and one will understand the heights in which this band carried themselves. Their consistency after the epic Dog Man Star would continue with their 3rd album “Coming Up” which Brett Anderson appropriately claimed was an album to “do your hair to” before going out. That the entire album is full of singles is an understatement. Coming Up may be the most pop that guitar music had ever become. The themes in the album were obvious. Suede glorified youth culture, idleness, beautiful people, and the chemistry between lovers. When one listens to Suede, one is overcome with the feeling that they have to go out for the night, even if it’s by yourself to mimic Brett Anderson in the “Saturday Night” video watching forlorn lovers walking in the full moon lit street. Suede mastered this sense of aggrandized romance perfectly. There are few bands who identified youth as irresistibly as Suede.
7. The Zombies
At first, the Zombies created infectious melodic music like many of the bands of their day. They wore suits like them and wore their hair like them. Great songs amongst their catalogue included “Tell Her No” and “She’s Not There”, which both embodied the perfect summer quality of 60’s pop songwriting. It wasn’t until their last album though that they became memorialized as one of the greatest bands of all time. “Odyssey and Oracle” is one of the most magical albums ever put to vinyl. Rarely has pop music made a more mellifluous sounding masterpiece than Odyssey and Oracle, as many times these theme albums become cumbersome to listen to in their self-indulgent gestures. Odyssey and Oracle however was like listening to a theme album where all the songs were singles. Care for Cell 44 may be one of the most conspicuous signifiers of summertime in music for the listener lucky enough to come across this largess gem. “Brief Candles” delivered on a chorus so strong, one wondered how it could not have been released as a single. One realized afterwards though that “Time of The Season” was arguably the apex in pop songwriting. Never has their been a song in minor key that still recognized golden iridescence as well as “Time of The Season”. “Hung Up On a Dream” was vocal music played to perfection with backing vocals that floated into the highest of daydreams. The summer is Odyssey and Oracle. Little did The Zombies know how influential their last album would be. Disparaged by their lack of success, The Zombies broke up before being able to witness how successful this album would become. A magnum opus it was as this album is equally easy to listen to and full of subtlety in the lyrics and musicianship. With this album, The Zombies are a must for the “Best British Bands of All Time” list. That they were the only band to create a concept album that was always fun to listen to, and needed no “time of the day” to listen to, puts them in their superlative rank.
6. The Verve
The Verve were a force to be reckoned with in the 90’s. Their music has stood the test of time beyond most bands of their generation. Songs like “Sonnet” and “History” were imbued with the exact qualities needed to have longevity in an art form that prides itself on momentary pleasure. When it comes to pure rock songs, it’s hard to imagine a band that equals The Verve. When one watches The Verve from Wigan in 1997, one is amazed at the power of “Rolling People” when it crashes in unexpectedly. When one listens to “This is Music”, one is struck by the sheer conviction in Richard Ashcroft’s vocal delivery and the music itself overloaded with a wall-of-sound guitar palette accomplished perfectly with the help of Owen Morris’s exaggerated production techniques. Ashcroft’s existential motifs hit at the listener who searched for meaning in a sometimes meaningless world. “You go in on your own and you leave on your own, forget your lovers you’ve known and your friends on the road” was Ashcroft at his best in his honest attempts at cosmic understanding in this whimsical acoustic song called “On Your Own”. Nick McCabe would prove to be one of the greatest guitarists of his generation seemingly being influenced by Funkadelic, The Cocteau Twins, and T-Rex. His style has never been replicated, and never has the term “dream pop” been so perfectly exemplified than in some of McCabe’s work on The Verve’s first album “Storm in Heaven”. When you take the utter conviction of a singer like Richard Ashcroft and augment it with the broad strokes of sonic color in someone like Nick McCabe, you are bound to create greatness, which was seen in every piece of music the Verve ever released.
5. Oasis
British music in the 90’s was defined solely by Oasis. Everyone afterwards wrote songs with massive choruses and Marshall stacks turned to 10. The Oasis sound has tried to be replicated excessively by lesser bands. What was always missing from those bands though was the sheer quality of songwriting exhibited by Noel Gallagher, and the power of Liam Gallagher’s snarl, which often goes unnoticed. After Oasis, everyone wore their hair long and drank until the long hours of the night, or at least pretended to. Beyond Oasis’s influences though is the greatness of their simplicity. Armed with songs that were not afraid to repeat their choruses, and melodies that would float in your head even in this most dismal of moods, Oasis would go on to create a massive catalogue of memorable songs that were sung by the UK, music enthusiasts all over the globe, and a couple of Old-Wizards from America. The adrenaline rush that one gets while listening to “Columbia” is unmatched in any other song. The feel of timeless quality epitomized in “Live Forever” is unmatched by most bands before or after. Add to this the fact that Oasis are still able to create these feelings for the music listener even today with their latest album “Don’t Believe The Truth” which is filled with the same types of quality in their previous work. “Turn up the sun”, and “Love like a bomb” are perfect examples. Oasis has often been criticized for not changing their style enough, but when their style sounds as good as their’s, there’s no reason to change for the sake of some ideal that would make them less than what they are, which is pure quality in simplicity.
4. Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd took pop music to a place it had never been with the Barret / Waters symbiosis. Floyd’s first album “Piper at The Gates of Dawn” was a record never like any other before or after. This acid tripped pop album was catchy, loud, and filled with outer space mania. After the all to well known demise of Syd Barret, Pink Floyd would continue their success with a slew of amazing albums. “Meddle” would go down in it’s own right as one of the best compositions in pop music history seeing its success in the grace of “Pillows of Wind” and the timeless stretch of “Echo’s” which is quite possibly the greatest pop song over ten minutes in length. “Atom Heart Mother” and “Animals” were more great albums that go often unnoticed in the Pink Floyd discography. This is disingenuous as songs like “Summer 68″ and “Dog’s” are perfectly executed songwriting guided by a sense of disattachment from the concerns of the times, and this is what made Pink Floyd so great. Their sense of vastness and timelessness was unmatched by any other band before or after. Their most successful album “Dark Side of the Moon” embodied all the qualities of their previous albums and effloresced their sonic palette into the mainstream with this epic tale of a philosophical journey. One need only put on “Us and Them” to understand the level that Pink Floyd was making music during this “mid period”. After “Animals”, Pink Floyd like most bands would fall into making less quality albums, even though still having explicitly popularity with these albums. What Pink Floyd will be remembered for though was their unexpected protrusion into the pop market with “Piper’s at the Gate’s of Dawn” and their subsequent albums up to “Animals” that existed in open space floating with a sense of paradox between pure energy and pure disattachment.
3. T-Rex
In the 1970’s when flower power’s sun was setting, new music in Britain popped it’s head from the flowers already planted, and colored them with the radiance and mellifluence that 60’s music sometimes ignored. This movement more concerned with stomp and stars, rather than relaxation and panacea was called “Glam Rock”. While this genre is often stated with negative connotations in ones mind, it must always be remembered how quality the music was from the fathers of this genre. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than Marc Bolan and T-Rex who slid, swept, and careened the music listener into star gazing and colorful clothes wearing. T-Rex who could both whomp the listener with big riffs and tame them with soft acoustic strumming, showed the diversity of it’s main member Marc Bolan, who was part dragon, part dandy, and all cosmic dancer. “Get it On” would prove to be one of the most catchiest rock songs ever released. “Life’s a Gas” would prove to be one of the most tender moments for any pop song ever released. His innumerous albums all focused on perfect songwriting influenced by the most heavenly and transcendent of themes. Even in Bolan’s “fat period” which often is criticized for lacking the quality of his previous work, there’s a heavy dose of strong songwriting and contagious riffs to carry the listener beyond the first ten listens of the album. Bolan’s portended death would only add to his already established legacy as the one and only “dandy of the underworld”. His work is consistently reissued with interviews and different takes of his best songs. His reemergence within modern music is owed to the fact that his and T-Rex’s songs are still fresh and pleasing to listen to today. T-Rex is the slide in one’s step and the stars in ones brows.
2. The Rolling Stones
When The Rolling Stones first came out, they were understood to be the bad boy Beatles. While this connotation held some validity, it would prove to be utterly limited in the understanding of who The Rolling Stones were. The Stones early work certainly epitomized an antithetical theme to the fawning attitude towards The Beatles at that time, but what The Stones were, was much more than an antithesis. They were the groove itself as pop music’s best claim to its sometimes grasped greatness. When one hears a song like “Under my Thumb”, one can’t help but be instilled with a surreptitious feeling of dance. This song’s slinkier vocal delivery combined with its even more slinkier lyrical theme created one of the greatest instinctual pop moments in pop music’s history. Beyond the 60’s though, The Rolling Stones became one of the greatest bands of all time in the 70’s. It’s in the 70’s that they hit their stride devoid of Brian Jones’s self-annihilative personality. The songs that can be listed in their repertoire from this age are stunning. “Can’t you hear me knocking” has more vocal sass than all blues singers before him. “Bitch” had one of the most grooving riffs and backing beats for any rock song in search of those salient qualities. “Give me Shelter” may have been Rock n Roll’s finest moment striking a sense of urgency not grasped by bands today. “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Mainstreet” would go on to define the rock music of the 70’s that was raw, loosely executed, and inordinate in hip shaking rhythms. McJagger and Keith Richards are still undoubtedly the best rock songwriting team in rocks 60 year history. That their output in the 80’s and 90’s would diminish in quality takes away little from the fact that they created their work in the 60’s and 70’s. One need only go back to listen to “Street Fighting Man” to understand the power of this band who could venerate the most somber of moods. When one want wants to listen to Rock n Roll, there is no place more obvious than The Rolling Stones. No band before or after has defined this genre as well.
1. The Smiths
What makes The Smiths so great is not the easiest thing to describe to a potential neophyte. The first time one hears The Smiths, one says to himself “Why am I listening to this yodeler yodel behind cheesy 80’s music”. On close inspection though, one is inundated by the greatest lyricist of all time in the one and only Steven Morrissey, and some of the most perfect guitar playing of all time from Johnny Marr. What these two created was some of the most unique sounding pop music in history. “This Charming Man” and “The Boy With The Thorn in His Side” are the most conspicuous examples of the what perfect pop music is. Move beyond these gems and one is swayed by the glam rock stomp of “Sheila Take a Bow”, and the jocular “Some Girls are Bigger than Others”. Morrissey who was and still is the least politically correct lyrist of all time, writes on a level way beyond any songwriter today. His careful and penetrating insights into the banality of modern culture was never done with the acrimony of a modern artists understanding of authenticity, instead, Morrissey coquettishly giggled at what he saw as his age’s herd animalization. The Smiths who were once deemed as music for the “bed-sit generation” related to the music listener who was bored out of his mind in the world they lived in. One only needs to look at the middle 8 lyric from “Shoplifters of the World Unite and Take Over” to see the authority in which Morrissey spoke in this theme. “A heartless hand on my shoulder, a push and its over, alabaster crashes down, six months is a long time, tried living in the real world, instead of a shell, but before I began, I was bored before I even began”. This lyric is just one instance among many of Morrissey’s gifts, highlighting the unwanted expectations inculcated to teenagers in their youth. All this occurred within the musical landscape of Johnny Marr’s chiming guitar which was as much island sounding as it was rock sounding. The perfect compositions that Johnny Marr would create would be offset by Morrisey’s lugubrious albeit amusing lyrics and vocal delivery. This paradox of sound and voice created the most unique and pleasurable listening experience for British music’s glorious history. This paradox will probably never be exemplified as perfectly as The Smiths. They are the kings of British pop music because of it.
