How British Pop Music Took Over The World

A new documentary series starts on BBC Four (UK) later this week called Pop Britannia.

Starting with the birth of pop after the Second World War up until the present day, this series examines generations of youthful revolution and how British pop has taken the world by storm.

Episode 1: 10pm, Fri 4 January BBC Four

Move It

But the British Invasion and Beatlemania almost never happened at all. During the previous 20 years, the British music establishment based in London's Denmark Street and controlled by a nexus of publishers, major record companies and the BBC, had done its best to incorporate every new style of popular music and its performers into what it knew best - show business and the light entertainment industry.

By the end of the 50s, rising affluence and new technologies meant that there was a new generation of post war kids, confident that the world was theirs for the taking. Yet they barely had their own soundtrack. Their imaginations had been captured by American rock and roll and rhythm and blues but homegrown British pop was imitative, patronised by the Establishment and our first pop stars - Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde et al - were happy to do what their elders and betters told them. This was the world that obliged The Beatles to escape to Hamburg to learn their trade, that repeatedly passed on the band and finally and almost reluctantly signed them while replacing their leather jackets with crew necked suits.

This film traces the ebb and flow of the emergence of a British pop dream in the 50s and its struggle to emerge from a conservative, derivative notion of pop dictated by its elders and betters.

Produced by Alan Lewens

Episode 2: 22:00, Friday 11 Jan, 2008, BBC Four

A Well Respected Man

Together with their artists, the likes of Brian Epstein, Andrew Loog Oldham, Chris Stamp et al, would prise British pop out of the grasp of old school showbiz interests and turn it into the spearhead of a youthful revolution into style.

Yet they also prepared the way for a new, more corporate rock business that allowed big money and corporate lawyers to move in. Glam stole back the impetus for the kids, putting colour, youth and sexuality back into pop after the rock revolution of the late 60s. Glam struggled between two tendencies - one lead by the art-school brigade of Bowie and Ferry who used glam as provocation, the other fuelled the charts as professional songwriters and producers like Chinn and Chapman who sold million of records with the likes of Mud, The Sweet etc. It would take punk to lay the groundswell for a new generation of young pop dreamers.

Produced by Ben Whalley

Episode 3: 22:00, Fri 18 Jan 2008, BBC Four

Two Tribes

At the dawn of the 80s, a generation of punk-inspired art students invented bands like The Human League, ABC and Dexy's Midnight Runners and took British pop round the world again via MTV.

This British pop had a fascination with style and image, a flair for gender provocation and a restless ambition. Spandeau Ballet, Duran Duran and Culture Club took the blueprint and quickly turned into international act that, by Live Aid in 1984 were suddenly starting to act remarkably similarly to old guard acts like Queen with whom they shared the Wembley stage.

A new mainstream was emerging and Stock, Aitken and Waterman re-modelled the Motown approach for Thatcher's Britain while Pet Shop Boys looked wanly on. The 90s belonged to the starmakers who put together the likes of Take That and Boyzone and Cool Britannia, a brief art school coup by the indie kids lead by Blur and Oasis. 10 years on, the likes of Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs have taken up the Cool Britannia challenge while Girls Aloud and Sugababes prove that good production-line pop is a matter of character and producer.

Produced by Ben Whalley

For more information about the documentary series click here.

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