Deleted Scenes

The following text was my work assignment for one of my subjects at University. It consisted on comparing the British music scene with the American. Don't know if I reached that goal, but I passed that subject anyway. I just think this blog needs more texts than videos, so this is a good one to start...

"In a deleted scene of Pulp Fiction, Uma Thurman says that everyone is either an Elvis person or a Beatles person, somewhere along the line you have to like one more than the other. Ever since the music industry’s massification, comparisons between American music and British music have been made, without any of them being regarded as the best or the worst. American and British music have been seen either totally different as complementary. This makes sense, since America has been found by the British, consequently being influenced by Britain’s culture and customs. But there was a breach along the way.
American music started its own development with the United States rich variety of cultures and nationalities. It all started with the fusion of the Native American sounds with the rhythms brought together by the Europeans and the South Americans. Even though American music has its roots over the other continents, it was in the United States that many music genres were born. From R&B to Hip Hop, from Jazz to Rock, the States had an important role on the creation of music.
After America started Billboarding their music, the United Kingdom finally developed its music, adding to the prominent American influence, influences from English, Scottish and Irish folk music. Soon enough, British-style rock had grown and the British Invasion occurred, led by the Beatles, The Who, and The Rolling Stones among others, opposing to their American equivalents such as Elvis Presley or Bill Haley. This led to the common mainstream success of both music industries. Both American and British productions sold harmoniously together with acts like Queen, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones or Talking Heads.
During the 80’s British music started to become less influenced by American with the rise of New Wave. This became more evident with the clash, in the early 90’s, of Grunge and Britpop. While American spawned the charts with artists like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the British answered with Oasis and Blur.
Later on, American and British music grew even apart with the continuous success of American acts such as Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, Madonna and Mariah Carey, mostly Pop acts. Also New York-based Hip Hop started to develop during the late 90’s which helped the Americanization of the music business. Even though British girl band, the Spice Girls, found world wide success in the mid-90’s, British music didn’t grow as American did. Nowadays we can confirm that American music found its way to the globe, while British music found some success over Europe, Australia and Japan, but it’s nothing that we can compare with the American globalization.
The United States found their way to global recognition, while the United Kingdom found somewhat their way to European recognition, although it is not that effective. A pure example of this is Pop acts Kelly Clarkson and Leona Lewis. The first won the reality-TV music themed show American Idol and found mainstream and global success with her second album Breakaway (much thanks to the breakthrough single Since U Been Gone), the latter won the British equivalent to American Idol, The X-Factor but she is still unknown throughout Europe. This effect can also apply when the labels try to launch their artists on each country due to their previous success. The American find no trouble on guaranteeing a spot on the British music scene, while the opposite often ends in a flop, with most recent exclusion of Soul singer Amy Winehouse.
Still, this is no surprise, since we are all well aware of the American globalization, but it is somehow worthy to point out the differences between one music scene and the other. And if you ask me, I’m a Beatles person after all..."

Friday, February 15, 2008