Menu Expand
Englishness, Pop and Post-War Britain

Englishness, Pop and Post-War Britain

Kari Kallioniemi

(2016)

Additional Information

Book Details

Abstract

English pop music was a dominant force on the global cultural scene in the decades after World War II—and it served a key role in defining, constructing, and challenging various ideas about Englishness in the period. Kari Kallioniemi covers a stunning range of styles of pop—from punk, reggae, and psychedelia to jazz, rock, Brit Pop, and beyond—as he explores the question of how various artists (including such major figures as David Bowie and Morrissey), genres, and pieces of music contributed to the developing understanding of who and what was English in the transformative post-war years.

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Cover Cover
Half Title i
Title iii
Copyright iv
Contents v
Acknowledgements vii
Foreword ix
Introduction: Englishness, History and Writing about Pop Music – Seeking the Authentic Voice of Pop-Britain 1
Chapter 1: Strategies for Conceptualizing Notions of Pop-Englishness 15
1.1. The Peculiarities of English National Pop Identity 17
1.2. Between Modernity and Tradition: Imaginary Englishness 26
1.3. Englishness and Pop Geography 36
1.4. Pop-Englishness and Transnationalism: The History of Americanization and Relation to Europe 44
1.5. The Peculiar Entrepreneurialism of British Music Management 54
Chapter 2: From Tommy Steele to Village Green Preservation Society 69
2.1. Pop, English Parochialism and Post-War Britain − Change and Continuity 71
2.2. Young England, Half English: Englishness, the History of National Music and the Emergence of British Rock’n’roll 75
2.3. The Myth of Swinging Englishness: The British Invasion and Swinging London 91
2.4. Lazing on a Sunny Psychedelic Afternoon − Englishness and the 1960s Nostalgia for Imaginary Spaces of England 102
Chapter 3: Anarchy and Enterprise in the UK and the Multiplying of Notions of Pop-Englishness 119
3.1. From the Winter of Discontent to Free Enterprise: Thatcherism, Pop and Englishness 121
3.2. Punk, Disco and Progressive Rock: The Proliferation of Pop-Englishness in the 1970s 125
3.3. Dandyist Masks and Escape Rout(in)es of David Bowie and the New Pop 141
3.4. Pop-Englishness and Politics: The White British Soul Boys 152
Chapter 4: The Road to Britpop and Back 171
4.1. Blairism and Cameronism: Pop, Politics and Englishness 173
4.2. Morrissey as an International Outsider 178
4.3. The North Strikes Back − Madchester and the Northern Metaphor Revisited 183
4.4. The Battle for Britpop 189
4.5. Post-Britpop and the Ghosts of Englishnesses Past 195
References 209
Index 231
Back Cover Back Cover