| 2000s in music in the UK | |
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| Best-selling albums | |
| Summaries and charts 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 |
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| ←1999 | 2010→ |
| Top 10 singles 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 |
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| ←1999 | 2010→ |
Popular music of the United Kingdom in the 2000s continued to expand and develop new sub-genres and fusions. While talent show contestants were one of the major forces in pop music, British soul maintained and even extended its high profile with figures like Joss Stone and Amy Winehouse, while a new group of singer/songwriters lead by Adele achieved international success. New forms of dance music emerged, including grime and dubstep. There was also a revival of garage rock and post punk, which when mixed with electronic music produced new rave. In August 2011 the Sony DADC warehouse was torched during the 2011 England Riots resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of CDs belonging to indie labels.[1]
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Post-Britpop bands such as The Verve, Radiohead, Catatonia and Travis were followed in the 2000s by acts including Snow Patrol, from Northern Ireland and Elbow, Embrace, Starsailor, Doves and Keane from England, with music that was often more melodic and introspective.[2][3] The most commercially successful band in the milieu were Coldplay, whose début album Parachutes (2000) went multi-platinum and helped make them one of the most popular acts in the world by the time of their second album A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002).[4]
Like many American alternative rock bands, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, several British indie bands emerged, including Franz Ferdinand, The Libertines and Bloc Party, that drew primary inspiration from New Wave and Post-punk groups such as Joy Division, Wire, and Gang of Four, establishing the post-punk revival movement.[5] Other prominent independent rock bands in the 2000s included: Editors, The Fratellis, Placebo, Lostprophets, Razorlight, Kaiser Chiefs, The Kooks and Arctic Monkeys[6] (the last being the most prominent act to owe their success to the use of internet social networking).[7]
The decade saw the solo success for British singer/songwriters, including David Gray, Dido, making use of acoustic music and remixes, whose breakthrough albums White Ladder (2000) and No Angel (1999) respectively, went multi-platinum.[8] Later in decade a second wave including James Blunt with Back to Bedlam (2003), KT Tunstall with Eye to the Telescope (2004), James Morrison with Undiscovered (2006),[9] and Amy Macdonald with This Is the Life (2007) enjoyed similar levels of success.[10]
The term "retro-metal" has been applied to such bands as The Darkness, whose unique mix of glam rock and heavy riffs earned them a string of singles hits and a quintuple platinum album with One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back (2005), which reached number 11.[11] Bullet for My Valentine, from Wales, broke into the top 5 in both the U.S. and British charts with their melodic dark rock, with Scream Aim Fire (2008).[12]
With developments in computer technology and music software, it became possible to create high quality music using little more than a single laptop computer.[13] This resulted in a massive increase in the amount of home-produced electronic music available to the general public via the expanding internet,[14] and new forms of performance such as laptronica[13] and live coding.[15] In Britain the combination of indie with American pioneered dance-punk was dubbed new rave in publicity for Klaxons and the term was picked up and applied by the NME to a number of bands,[16] including Trash Fashion,[17] New Young Pony Club,[18] Hadouken!, Late of the Pier, Test Icicles,[19] and Shitdisco[16] forming a scene with a similar visual aesthetic to earlier rave music.[16][20]
In the 2000s, new girl groups managed to enjoy sustained success, including the Sugababes[21] and Girls Aloud, the last of the these the most successful British product of the many Popstars format programmes, which began to have a major impact in the charts from the beginning of the 2000s.[22] The most successful solo winner Leona Lewis enjoyed a number one album in 2008 and her début single "Bleeding Love" was the first number one single in the U.S charts by a British solo female artist since Kim Wilde in 1987.[23] The 2000s also saw the reunion of Take That, who went on to achieve new stardom by the end of the decade with record breaking tours, 4 consecutive number 1 albums and a string of hit singles in the UK and Europe.
British soul in the 2000s was dominated by female singers, many of them white, including Natasha Bedingfield, Joss Stone, Amy Winehouse,[24] Adele and Duffy, all of whom have enjoyed success in the American charts, leading to talk of a "Third British Invasion", "Female Invasion" or "British soul invasion".[25] In 2009, Jay Sean's single "Down" reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold two million copies in the United States,[26] making him "the most successful male UK urban artist in US chart history."[27] Female singer songwriters of various genres began to dominate the British charts in 2006 with the previously mentioned Winehouse and Lily Allen. In August 2011 the top 5 positions on the Album charts were held by women with two albums by Adele and Amy Winehouse and American singer Beyonce holding the other spot.[28]
In the 2000s bands and artists appeared who functioned as cross-over acts between the indie rock and folk scenes. Their music often utilised traditional instruments, sometimes beside electronic music. London's nu-folk scene included artists like Laura Marling, Noah and the Whale, Mumford & Sons and Johnny Flynn[29] and that in Scotland, centred on Glasgow and with a more Celtic tinge, included artists such as Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers and Pearl and the Puppets.[30]
At the beginning of the 2000s a new style of electronic music, influenced heavily by hip hop and UK garage, and dubbed grime (sometimes called eskibeat or sublow), included acts such as Dizzee Rascal, Lady Sovereign,[31] Wiley, Sway DaSafo, Ghetto and Kano.[32] The eponymous debut album of Gorillaz, created by Damon Albarn in 2001, sold over seven million copies and earned them an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as the Most Successful Virtual Band.[33] The success of The Streets' 2002 album Original Pirate Material drew the media's attention to lighter, more melodic rap as a form of pop music and this was followed by the success of Welsh rap group Goldie Lookin' Chain and acts like N-Dubz, Tinchy Stryder and Chipmunk, dubbed "Brithop" by the press.[34] Other successful Hip-Hop/Grime artists include Aggro Santos, Tinie Tempah, Professor Green, Bashy, Devlin and Skepta. The popularity of British rap has significantly risen over the past few years. 6 Number 1 singles were scored by UK rappers in 2009, and 6 Number 1 singles were scored in 2010. And previous to 2009, a British rapper had never topped the Uk singles chart. Artists to reach the number 1 spot are Dizzee Rascal, Tinchy Stryder, Chipmunk, Tinie Tempah, Roll Deep and Plan B.
Dubstep developed from garage music at the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s, using elements of drum'n'bass, techno, and dub, to produce a largely instrumental, "dark" sound, based around relatively simple rhythms and often with extended hypnotic mixes.[35] Its origins centred around the London Forward>> club nights and it was disseminated through pirate radio shows.[35] Major artists included Skream, Burial, Kode9, Pinch, Horsepower Productions, Vex'd, Digital Mystikz, Zomby, Shackleton and Benga.[35] Releases like Burial's Untrue (2007) and the mix albums series Dubstep All-Stars helped the sub-genre gain critical and some limited commercial success.[35]
In the 2000s synthpop began to re-emerge as a new wave of indie artists began to incorporate the sound into their songs. Major British acts to be influenced by this sound include pioneers Goldfrapp,[36] and Hot Chip,[37] who were followed by acts including Little Boots,[38] Ellie Goulding[39] and La Roux.[40] The electronic sound and style have arguably influenced many other mainstream pop artists, including Lily Allen's second album It's Not Me, It's You (2009), which abandoned the ska influences of her earlier work.[41]
British musical success in the United States was at its nadir in the early 2000s. Less than 2% of the top 100 United States albums in both 2000 and 2001 were from the United Kingdom. In April 2002, for the first time since October 1963, there were no British acts on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.[42] This would be reversed in the latter half of the decade when the percentage of albums sold in the U.S. by British acts increased every year from 2005 through 2008. It would increase from 8.5% to 10% of the market between 2007 and 2008.[43]
In 2007 Joss Stone's third album Introducing Joss Stone debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 becoming the first British solo female artist to have an album début that high on the chart.[44] In 2006 and early 2007 British and Irish acts James Blunt, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, Lady Sovereign, KT Tunstall, Snow Patrol and Corinne Bailey Rae also had U.S. chart success. By March 2007 these successes had led to speculation that either another British Invasion was underway or that there was a return to normalcy.[31][45][46] In 2008 Leona Lewis's single "Bleeding Love" would become the first number one single on U.S charts by a British female artist since 1986. Her album also reached number 1.[47] The year would also be a successful one for Duffy, Adele, Estelle, and M.I.A..[48][49][50][51][52][53] Led by Coldplay, British acts received a total of 16 Grammy Awards.[54]
In 2011 albums from three British artists, Adele, Mumford & Sons and Marsha Ambrosius, held the top three album spots during one week for the first time in a quarter of a century. Adele became the first female singer to be named Billboard's top artist and have both the number 1 album ("21") and number 1 single("Rolling in the Deep") for the same year[55]. By the time 2011 ended Adele had broken records, had accomplished what no artist or female artist had previously accomplished or had accomplished what had not been accomplished in many years on the Billboard charts[56]. Tinie Tempah became the first British hip hop artist to have a debut US single that sold at least one million units and two singles from the record have entered the Billboard Hot 100[57]. Singer Jessie J's second single sold a million units and Florence and The Machine has done well enough to be the topic of a Billboard Magazine cover story in September[58]. Various explanations have been given by people in the music industry for this success. Spin Magazine music editor Charles Aaron, speaking of the female singer/songwriters, called Amy Winehouse's breakthrough the "Nirvana moment". Billboard's chart manager Keith Caulfield also credited Winehouse and said, "They're not giving us the usual 'We're going to stay up until 6 a.m. and party like we've never partied before,'?". Caulfield says, "Their approach is more classic and quirky, which makes Americans pay more attention. Tinie Tempah credited the confidence of the British Artists and David Joseph, the chairman of Universal Music UK noted that unlike in the past British artists are not specifically targeting the US but American audiences are noticing their talent through the internet.[59][60][61]
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