DontRunMeOver

The closeness of this competition must show that, per capita, the Brits are way better than Americans at music! There are five times more Americans than Brits, so they should have five times more good bands than us! But do they? No.

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TrampInaTux

Well that might also be where their downfall lies. There are fewer British artists, so there are fewer crap artists. There are more American artists, so there are more crap American artists. It might just seem that America are worse at making music because they have more of a chance to fail.

Urban Hat€monger ?

If that were true there would be more good American bands too so that would balance it out.

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TrampInaTux

I know I realise this but looking at my collection I prefer many more American bands than I do English ones. It's just that the English bands that I do own albums of kick so much arse that it overshadows all the American bands in my collection. I'm trying to raise points for both sides of the argument here. I still prefer British music, but it is a pretty close competition.

Urban Hat€monger ?

I think it`s more down to exposure than anything.

America seems very conservative when it comes to music , hence it`s charts full of hip hop , R&B & rock and very little else.

The UK seems to enjoy looking for new things.And bands that do something a little different seem to become popular, case in point Massive Attack. They were really the first band to mix Hip Hop , Electronica , Reggae , Dub & Dance Music.Blue Lines was probably the biggest selling UK album when it came out.

You just don`t see that happening in America.

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TrampInaTux

I think that sometimes Britain has to work harder to get itself out of America's shadow, which makes it, as a whole, better at music. Case in point-rap. America does Rap so much better than the UK, and when British rap really kicked in and became a big thing you could see that most of the rappers had styles borrowed from American artists-which is pretty hard to do in the rap game. So then you get people like Mike Skinner who realise this and do something original (I'm not saying it's good) with the genre, and this gives a much needed boost to all the stereotypical British rappers out there who couldn't get past the 'hooded yobo' phase. This is only a minor case, but you can see that some of our best artists have tried to do something original with a very American formula and have turned it into something very unique and British. We borrow from the yanks and make it better.

Merkaba

Being very much an outsider of both nations I can see what Urban is saying.

If you said American music I know exactly what to think. Little fiddy cents in their masses, a few hundred thousand britneys, and some worse for wear metalheads.

When you say Britain though, my mind draws blanks. There is no one conclusion. First I think of Radiohead and then garage rock bands come to mind, a crap load of indie then shows up and last you know theres bound to be some pop floating around too.

Britain FEELS like a mixed bag. You don't know whats going to be the next big thing over there.

Yet 20 buks says a hip hop/rap artist will, again, be the next big thing in America.

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Urban Hat€monger ?

I said in my first post that America makes better Roots music & britain is more experimental.

I think you hit the nail on the head there.

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bungalow

What do you know about American music?

Merkaba

You guys get piss all rotation happening at the top.

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