I think it’s time to develop this idea a bit further.

My thesis is this: for musical movements which have emerged during the last quarter of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first, it is possible to to identify two previous musical movements which have directly influenced the artists involved. Of these two previous movements, one will have taken place approximatly ten years previously, and will consist of bands which the musicians of the subject movement listened to when they were teenagers. The other will have taken place approximatly twenty five years previously, and will consist of bands whose music had already established itself in mainstream pop culture by the time the musicians of the subject movement were becoming concious of popular music in their pre-teen years.

I’m going to attempt a semi-scientific study to test out this theory. I acknowledge the subjectivity of this study, but I don’t know enough about sociology to be know how my approach would be classified. Any sociologists who want to contribute their input would be most welcome; any historical materialists who want to do their own take on the subject will have me thoroughly impressed.

My approach is as follows:

1) Define a genre of music, it’s associated traits, the time frame during which it existed, and the time it reached the peak of it’s success.
2) Use Last.fm to get a list of bands tagged as that genre. Discard any bands which don’t fit my definition of the genre.
3) Use Wikipedia to compile a list of influences for each of the bands at the top of the list, listing the time frame during which they existed, their peak years of success and (roughly) their genre.
4) Split these influences into ‘primary’ and ’secondary’ categories and average the years of their existence and peak success.

I’m sure you can see that there’s plenty of subjectivity in that method. I’ll go through this process in detail for one genre (Britpop), more briefly for another (grunge), and just state results for a few others.

Britpop

My conception of Britpop is as a musical movement which emerged during the early years of the nineties and died a few years before the decade was over. If we want to pin it down to specific dates, then we could argue, as music critic John Harris does, that Britpop emerged in the spring of 1992 with the release of Popscene by Blur and The Drowners by Suede. The decline of Britpop came around 1997 as Britpop’s most prominent acts either released albums which failed to match their earlier success or which represented a change in musical direction. Oasis, for example, fell in the former category, releasing an album so unlistenable that they’ve spent the last ten years running away from it. Blur’s success continued with their self-titled album, but the change of musical style towards the American alternative rock they had previously derided was something a retreat from the ideas they had previously espoused. And Pulp released the fantastic but challenging This Is Hardcore, a dark record which explored themes of personal crisis and the seedy underbelly of Soho’s sex industry, and got a cool reception from those looking for feel-good tunes to drink larger and jump up and down to.

I think most people would agree with the 1992-1997 time frame for Britpop; it’s also worth noting that the genre was at the peak of it’s success between 1994 and 1996. However if we look at the artists tagged as ‘Britpop’ on Last.fm, we get a different picture. Oasis unsurprisingly come out on top, but folk rock band Travis, piano band Keane and soft rock stadium group Coldplay are also in the top ten. Are these groups really Britpop? I would think not; musically, lyrically and chronologically they are outside the definition of Britpop that I have defined above. Likewise Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs all belong firmly to the post-punk revival in my mind. Clearly the list generated by the opinions of Last.fm users differs from the definition of Britpop I intend to use for analytic purposes, and represents the fact that any British guitar pop band since Britpop emerged is liable to be given the label, just as Alternative Rock is now a catch-all term for many American groups who fall well outside the definitions of the original movement.

So this is the first problem- the question ‘Which bands are Britpop?’ elicits different answers from each person. So in defining Britpop, and subsequent genres I look at, I need to be selective in the bands I choose to represent the genre and apply a degree of personal discretion. Out of the top Britpop groups on Last.fm, the four groups which do clearly fall into my definition of Britpop are Oasis, Blur, Suede and Pulp. You could also throw in other bands like Radiohead, The Verve and Manic Street Preachers, but I’ll stick with these four for the time being.

We now need to find a way to prove that they sound like groups from a specific genre which was current x number of years before them. Generally, groups sound like the bands they are influenced by. This is not a universal truth, else music would be very boring; but the good thing about statistics is we can deal in generalities, and such discrepancies should not prevent us from establishing a general pattern.

Wikipedia generally has a section on influences on each of it’s entries for bands, so let’s check out the influences for Blur, Oasis Pulp and Suede and see where it leads us. For each band and their influences I’ve listed when they were active; when they peaked in popularity; and what genre I would assign to them. Much of this is again based on personal opinion.

Oasis (active 1991-present; peaked 1994-96; genre ‘Britpop’)
Influences:
The Beatles (1957-70; 1960-70; British Invasion)
The Who (1964-present; 1965-71; British Invasion)
The Rolling Stones (1962-present; 1964-71; British Invasion)
The Stone Roses (1984-1996; 1989-92; Indie)
Sex Pistols (1975-present; 1977; Punk)
The Kinks (1963-1996; 1964-70; British Invasion)
The Stooges (1967-present; 1970-73; hard rock)
Neil Young (1960-present; 1970-74; hard rock)
The Smiths (1982-87; 1984-87; Indie)

Blur (active 1989-2003; peaked 1993-1997; genre ‘Britpop’)
Influences:
The Kinks (1963-1996; 1964-70; British Invasion)
The Beatles (1957-70; 1960-70; British Invasion)
XTC (1976-2005; 1978-82; New Wave/post-punk)

Pulp (active 1978-2002; peaked 1994-94; genre ‘Britpop’)
Influences:
David Bowie (1964-present; 1969-73; Glam Rock)
The Cure (1976-present; 1983-89; Indie)
The Kinks (1963-1996; 1964-70; British Invasion)
The Beatles (1957-70; 1960-70; British Invasion)

Suede (active 1989-2003; peaked 1993-97; genre ‘Britpop’)
Influences:
David Bowie (1964-present; 1969-73; Glam Rock)
The Smiths (1982-87; 1984-87; Indie)

Lots of repeated names there. Roughly we can group the influences into two broad genres, like so, and average the peak dates of the relevant bands to find the years the genre covers.

Late sixties/early seventies rock (peaked 1965-71; 66% of total)
The Beatles (3 mentions)
The Kinks (3)
David Bowie (2)
The Who (1)
The Rolling Stones (1)
The Stooges (1)
Neil Young (1)

British Eighties indie (peaked 1982-86; 33% of total)
The Smiths (2)
The Stone Roses (1)
Sex Pistols (1- bit of an anomaly this one…)
XTC (1)
The Cure (1)

Now we’ve got something interesting. There seems to be a group of ‘primary’ influences, who peaked approximately 27 years before Britpop, and a group of ’secondary influences, who peaked 11 years before Britpop. If analysis of other genres produces similar results, then we have statistically proved our theory, although determining exactly why this occurs is another matter.

Grunge

Let’s look at another recent genre- grunge. I’ll use a similar process to above to work out the influences, so won’t bore you with the details. I’m going to define grunge as starting the release of Mudhoney’s Touch Me I’m Sick in 1988, and ending with the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994; peak years were between the release of Smells Like Teen Spirit in 1991 and Nirvana’s Unplugged performance in 1993.

Nirvana (active 1987-1994; peaked 1991-94; genre ‘grunge’)
Influences*:
Black Sabbath (1968-present; 1970-73; heavy metal)
Led Zepplin (1968-80; 1971-75; hard rock)
The Melvins (1982-present; 1991-94(ish); grunge/metal)
Mudhoney (1988-present; 1988-91; grunge)
Black Flag (1977-86; 1981-85; hardcore punk)
The Beatles (1957-70; 1960-70; British Invasion)
R.E.M. (1980-present; 1987-92; alternative rock/college rock)

Pearl Jam (active 1990-present; peaked 1991-94; genre ‘grunge’)
Influences:
The Who (1964-present; 1965-71; British Invasion)
Neil Young (1960-present; 1970-74; hard rock)
Ramones (1974-96; 1976-77; punk)

Alice In Chains (active 1987-present; peaked 1990-92; genre ‘grunge’)
Influences:
Black Sabbath (1968-present; 1970-73; heavy metal)
Led Zepplin (1968-80; 1971-75; hard rock)
Metallica (1981-present; 1986-91; heavy metal)

Soundgarden (active 1984-1997; peaked 1991-94; genre ‘grunge’)
Influences:
Led Zepplin (1968-80; 1971-75; hard rock)
Butthole Surfers (1981-present; 1992-96; alternative rock)

*Wikipedia is not very helpful here, so I’ve added a few more based on the BBC’s Left Of The Dial documentary on grunge.

The first of the two genres is easy to identify:

Early seventies hard rock/heavy metal (peaked 1969-73; 60% of total)
Black Sabbath (3 mentions)
Led Zepplin (2)
The Beatles (1- again an anomaly, and one which no doubt accounts for the more melodic sound of Nirvana compared to their peers)
The Who (1)
Neil Young (1)
Ramones (1)

The second presents us with a problem. Averaging the peak dates as previously gives us 1988-92, which is almost exactly the same time period as the one I used to define grunge itself. Hence, we have a paradox- grunge was influenced by grunge, or rather the broader alternative rock movement in which it existed.

American Alternative Rock (peaked 1988-92; 40% of total)
The Melvins (1)
Mudhoney (1)
Black Flag (1)
R.E.M. (1)
Metallica (1)
Butthole Surfers (1)

How do we square this circle? First of all, let’s ditch Mudhoney, who quite clearly were a grunge band, and influenced Nirvana as contemporaries rather than past heroes. Of the remaining five, their average forming date is 1980. Most of them did not obtain mainstream success until they were illuminated by the spotlight shone on Nirvana and the other superstars of grunge. I’ve been making the assumption that bands are at their most influential when they are at their peak, but in the world of eighties alternative rock this seems not to have been the case. Bands who emerged in the early eighties with a post-punk do-it-yourself attitude and an amateurish musical style were highly regarded by those who later went on to create grunge, and the success of Nirvana et al boosted R.E.M. et al into the mainstream.

So we can conclude that grunge was influenced by music which existed about ten years previously, just not music which was mainstream. In other words, Nirvana got into R.E.M. by listening to Murmur rather than Automatic for the People.

This leads us to an interesting conclusion. For both grunge and Britpop the set of influences from 20+ years previously contains bands who all achieved major commercial success. The set of influences from approximately ten years previously contains less commercially successful, more ‘alternative’ bands, who were still influential despite not being as mainstream.

I believe this is a consequence of the manner in which we absorb influences. As stated in the introduction, I suspect that the first set of influences is absorbed from popular culture during our pre-teen years, and therefore must be mainstream, commercially successful music. As become teenagers, we become more discerning in our musical taste and are more likely to hunt down music from less accessible bands, thus accounting for the second set of influences.

Summary

We can summarise our findings for Britpop and grunge like so:

Genre: Britpop (1992-1997)
Main bands: Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Suede
Primary influence: Late sixties/early seventies rock (1965-71)
Secondary influence: British Eighties Indie (1982-86)

Genre: Grunge (1988-1994)
Main bands: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden
Primary influence: Early seventies hard rock/heavy metal (1969-73)
Secondary influence: American Alternative Rock (1980-)

Without going into details, I’ll assert a couple of others:

Genre: Post-punk revival (2002-2007(ish))
Main bands: The Rapture, The Killers, Interpol, Bloc Party
Primary influence: Post-punk (1978-82)
Secondary influence: Britpop (1992-97)

Genre: New Rave/indiedisco (2006-)
Main bands: Klaxons, Hot Chip, CSS, The Whip
Primary influence: Electropop/New Romantic (1979-83)
Secondary influence: Experimental indie* (1997-2000)

*Yes, I just made that up. I’m thinking post-Ok Computer Radiohead, Super Furry Animals, Mogwai, Spirtualised…

Finally, we have interesting question of trying to predict what the Next Big Thing will be. I’m hoping that Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip might represent the beginning of a ‘real hop-hop’ revival, i.e. one based on the creativity and experimentation which originally characterised the genre, combined with the insane electronica popularised by Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Kid606 around the turn of the millennium. In the mainstream, we might see the re-emergence of eighties stadium rock combined with the soft-rock sensibilities of Coldplay, Travis and Robbie Williams. In reaction to this we might see a new generation of angry, guitar heavy rock bands along the line of Biffy Clyro, or the Subways. I certainly hope so.

Whadda you think? Flame away…