• Top 10 Reasons British Music is Better Than American Music

  

  Written by Zeromage 135 Comments
  Last Updated:: August 7, 2009

  Not many people understand that British music is better than American music.  They don’t understand this because of the political hegemony that America occupies in the West and “The Blues”.  It’s time to dig out the reasons why British music has always been better than American music.  It’s obvious to us here at Old-Wizard and has been since we started getting into music and realizing the patent difference in quality between the two countries.  Hopefully this list will only act as a preface to one’s actions of going back through the great music that the British made and realizing where the quality is.  If all else fails, then one will just be in a position of admitting that they have bad taste in music.
  10. Better Style

  Who were the trendsetters in music?  Well of course the British.  Everyone followed the style of British musicians and they still do today.  When Liam Gallagher grows his hair out so does a nation.  When Pete Townsend develops mod culture and style that goes along with it, a nation wears the style.  When The Stone Roses epitomized the “baggy scene” in loose pants, everyone started buying them.  No American band inspires this kind of mimicry.  The British know what great style is and combine their great songs with it.  The Americans write average songs and wear straight legged Levi jeans.

  9. Better Haircuts

  This is obvious.  Check out George Harrison’s hairdo.   Check out Robert Plant’s blonde curls.  Look at Liam Gallagher’s Zeus like hair.  What do musicians haircuts from America look like?  They’re thick dark pieces of shit and more often than not look dirty.  The Brits would never allow themselves to get away with having dirty hair.  Their rock stars; they’re the God’s of the modern age.  They can’t appear at shows with crap hair.  When style has been made by musicians, even in more blatant pop (E.G. Lilly Allen) it’s always been from British musicians.

  8. The Birth of Rave Culture

  Could you image a world without rave culture?  A world without DJ Shadow or Aphex Twins?  A world without the Chemical Brothers or Massive Attack?  Where would the beat be in music with Rave Culture?  Thank God for Tony Wilson and Factory Records for putting this absolutely essential music genre on the map.  The birth of the DJ was the birth of music as the groove, as it always should be.  The British bands that have spawned from this style are innumerous from The Stone Roses to The Happy Mondays, to New Order, to Monaco, to The Space Monkeys…all British bands…of course.

  7. More Ambition

  The Brits aren’t afraid to be big.  Starting with Lennon’s quote of being bigger than God which he stated simply as an empirical fact at the moment, The British weren’t afraid to take their music to the masses.  They weren’t afraid to dream beyond their bedroom and the music from Brits benefited from this attitude.  American music is afraid of ambition probably from some reaction to its cultural political surroundings that places itself in a position of manifest destiny.  So because of this we get lo-fi shit or boring bitch fests.  It’s time to turn modesty on it’s head and there’s no better place start than British Music.

  6. Shoegazing

  Britain gave us one of the best music genres in the past 20 years in Shoegazing.  Do you think Americans would be creative enough to come up with the sounds you hear out of “Loveless” or “Nowhere”?  Do you think an American could create a song like “Leave Them All Behind”?  They could copy it and it wouldn’t be good enough to even be covered by a small American “zine.”  Because of the Brit’s the music listener was able to enjoy Lush, Slowdive, and Chapterhouse.  There’s something distinctly British about these bands;  they all have imaginations, something lacking in most American music.

  5. Oasis

  In case anyone didn’t know.  Oasis came from Manchester England.  That’s a northern city in England.  Oasis is one of the greatest bands of all time if not the greatest band of all time.  America doesn’t have an Oasis, nor did they ever have an Oasis or any band that could compete with Oasis.  Take whatever America’s best band has ever been (can’t think of many) and match it up against Oasis’s songwriting catalogue and Oasis will undoubtedly win.  In fact, take Americas top 5 bands and put their songwriting catalogue against Oasis’s.  It’s still a no-contest.

  4. Better Record Labels

  This is certainly a difficult task to list all the great record label that came out of Britain.  For starters, there was Factory Records who hosted The Happy Mondays, Joy Division and The Inspiral Carpets just to name a few.  There is Creation Records who hosted Oasis, Ride, Swervedriver,  and Hurricane #1 just to name a few again.   There was 4AD which hosted the Cocteau Twins, Lush, and Slowdive just to name a few again.  Nude Records had both Suede and Geneva.  The list could keep going on.  No American label could match the quality output of bands on any of these British labels.

  3. Condemns the awful indie genre.

  British bands correctly condemn indie music whether it be American (which it is most of the time) or British (when some publication tries to tie them into that tag).  The greatest bands wanted nothing to do with it.  Ask Oasis if they’re indie  They’ll laugh at the word.  Ask the Stone Roses if they were indie and Ian Brown will say “The indie scene is shit”.  Ask Brett Anderson about the word “indie” and he says “It’s a dirty word to me.  A word that means people who don’t know how to play their instruments or write songs”.  This penchant for criticizing indie music has gone a long way for making British music bigger and better sounding than American music.  American music has it’s head up its own ass too much too see that their own self-reflection and loathing is superfluous.

  2. Better Bands

  Think about it.  The Stones, Led Zeppelin, Oasis,  Pink Floyd, T-Rex, The Kinks,  The Stone Roses?  What does America have besides The Byrds and The Beach Boys?  One can make an infinite list of all the great British bands and barely be able to make a top 10 list of the greatest American bands of all time.   Who are the top 10 greatest American bands of all time?  We can’t even think of 5 off the top of our head right now.  This is a no-brainer.

  1. Better Songs

  The most obvious reason why British music is better than American music is the songwriting.  C’mon now,  Oasis, Radiohead, The Verve, The Stone Roses, Suede, Dodgy, Coldplay, Shed Seven, Travis?  These are bands that mastered songwriting craft to a T.  There isn’t one American band out right now that could come close to the quality of songwriting produced by these bands (except maybe for Wilco), and these are just the modern British bands.  We aren’t even putting Zeppelin, T-Rex, The Who, and Bowie on this.  There are too many no-brainers on this list.

135 Comments

1. #1 Sammy says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:41 am

   Frank definetly didn’t retire from fighting. He just got through fighting Nick Diaz,and losing I might add, back in April I think. Not quite sure on the date. He was the champ whenever he quite the UFC though. He quite because he said there was no one that could give him a challenge. Back then that might have been true, but definetly not now. He was also a coach in the IFL, along with his brother. They had two different teams, but they were both coaches.
2. #2 Delta says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 4:23 am

   I dunno if Frank retired from fighting or not, but if he did, he could’ve gone back. I’d have to reread it, I just know it said he retired, but can’t concretely recall whether it was fighting in general(I think it was, but was short-lived) or just from the UFC.

   And I’m pretty sure that the Middleweight title he held was later reclassified(with an extra 5 lbs.) to Light Heavyweight.

   Also, on Tito Ortiz being signed with Strikeforce but never fought for them. Was it with Strikeforce or did you mix it with EliteXC too? Just wondering, it suddenly hit me I wasn’t sure which he’d been with.
3. #3 Sammy says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 6:49 am

   I might have mixed up the Tito thing because he was supposed to fight Babalou, and Frank who both were fighting for EliteXC at the time. My bad.
4. #4 Delta says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 9:18 am

   S’ok. I referred to Jenna Jameson’s “nether regions” as “them” instead of “it” lol so I made a similar mistake.
5. #5 UP2IP2 says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:10 am

   jesus lord

   Delta vs Ice

   NERD FIGHT!
6. #6 cody floyd says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:55 am

   UP21P2 is right.
7. #7 Avi says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

   STOP WITH THE MUSIC LISTS ALREADY!
8. #8 JesseOssenkopp says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:50 pm

   I really adore this site and its lists, however I find myself less entertained with these music lists. Granted, the Old-Wizard guys love the complaints, but end result here carries the notion that Old-Wizard is losing its charm. True, not all lists should pertain to the genre of videogames, but that sgould also apply to music.
9. #9 Avi says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 10:20 pm

   cody works for O-W click his name!
10. #10 Delta says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 1:45 am

    How’s it a fight, UP2IP2?

    As a fight, it’s about as lop-sided as 10 Krav Maga experts against a blind wheel-chair bound 11 year old.
11. #11 Avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 1:36 pm

    o and bush’s IQ is 125. slightly above average.
12. #12 Zeromage says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 4:37 pm

    @JesseOssenkopp:
    We decided to take a much needed break from video game lists, as we felt they were getting too stale and repetitive. We’ll be getting back to gaming in about 2 months, where we’ll be talking about a lot of different games (we’ve been playing a lot of old two player games lately, like Bomberman and WWF Raw). We also have these lists in the works:

    Top 10 Liberal Idiots
    Top 10 Beer Countries
    Top 10 Reasons Sweden is the Best Country in Europe
    Top 30 WWF Wrestlers

    For now you’ll just have to be patient, as we’re a little burnt out, and keep in mind, we do this site for free, as a hobby. So for now, everyone’s gonna have to suffer through about 2 more months of music.
13. #13 President Steve says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 5:00 pm

    I for one think its funny how people think they have a right to DEMAND what the authors of this site write about. Its their site, not yours, and as Zeromage said, they don’t get paid for this. No one is forcing anyone to come to this site, yet, the same people are here for every new article, still leaving comments about how much they hate this site. I for one enjoy the opinions expressed on this site, even though I hardly ever agree with them. They articles are always well thought and well written. But I would like to request to Zeromage to start deleting comments from people who just come here to complain. Its incredibly annoying. I can’t figure out why anyone would take time out of their day to complain about what some random person writes about. The whole Oasis thing is a perfect example. I can’t count how many times someone has left a comment telling Zeromage to shut up about Oasis. I’ll say again, if you don’t like it, LEAVE!
14. #14 Ralph says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    Considering the fact that the writers of this site constantly MAKE FUN OF their own readership, and the fact that even people who purport like the site don’t even agree with it, I’m amazed ANYONE comes here at all. There’s a lesson in human psychology somewhere in here…
15. #15 avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 5:45 pm

    ok, as long as you write about games in the future, i can wait.
16. #16 Sammy says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 9:57 pm

    Steve,

    People taking time out of their day to comment on this particular site, in a negative way isn’t any worse than you taking time out of your day to defend it. If they didn’t want people to leave comments for one there woudln’t be a place for it, and for two they have to have known that negative comments would be left when they write based on their opinions. See what I’m saying?
17. #17 Delta says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 12:15 am

    Sammy…..

    It doesn’t make sense though that they come over just to say they hate what the article is, every week, and give the impression that they’re never coming back to the site…..just to complain next week about what the article is!!

    And Ralph makes a good point about a lesson in psychology here.
18. #18 Sammy says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 6:43 pm

    While I agree it doesn’t make sense for them to leave hateful commets, and then make it seem as if they will never come back only to make yet another hateful comment on OW’s next topic, I still have to say that it also doesn’t make sense to me why President Steve would even bother with these people. Obviously their pretty childish to continue coming back time after time, and yes there is a lesson in pyschology that can be learned from this. That being said why bother with them if you know it won’t do any good? Why take time out of your day to leave a comment on their hateful comments? Like I said before they are obviously childish. Children have a tendency to do things just for attention. So why give them the attention by responding to them in anyway? I say you just ignore them, and act like the comment was never left. Who knows, It just might work. Also it just seems like Steve is being a kiss ass honestly, and to tell you the truth I just don’t like kiss asses. That is just my opinion, and, maybe I’m the only one that feels that way.
19. #19 Delta says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 10:59 pm

    Dunno if Steve’s being a kiss-ass or not, I normally just skim through the comments complaining about the articles being music again, and the comments responding to those. So I just get the gist of them. But he could be responding due to being annoyed by so many comments complaining about the articles being music articles again.
20. #20 Noel's Nose says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 4:16 pm

    Oasis, Joy Division, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, Tony Wilson, Factory Records, Suede, Brett Anderson, Ian Brown, New Order…10 reasons alone, and you’ve mentioned them all!

    Of course, #5 should be moved to the #1 slot, and you get major points off for the mention of Wilco. How can people with such great taste in British music like such shite American bands? At least you aren’t praising Kings of Leon…
21. #21 P.SO The Earth Tone King says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 5:29 am

    I love this site because you guys are so insanely bias that its laughable. I have a great deal of respect for British music. I definitely respect the individuality and the quality of the different genres that have emerged there from Shoegazing down to Dubstep. However, you guys refuse to acknowledge the American influence on English music and the rest of the world. We invented rock and roll…
22. #22 else3573 says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 4:03 am

    Uh, how did the british “invent” everything?? They stole blues from america and based most of their music on that in the 70’s, they based punk rock off Reggae from Jamaica, they’ve stolen hip hop and made terrible attempts to refine it, and as far as raves go, wasn’t Detroit the home of that entire scene (Illegal parties playing Techno music)??
23. #23 else3573 says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 4:12 am

    As for “great” american bands, with large discogs or at least 2 excellent albums, how bout:

    Metallica
    Alice in Chains
    Aerosmith
    The Ramones
    Bad Brains
    Pearl Jam
    Alice In Chains
    Foo Fighters
    Earth Wind and Fire
    Parliment
    Soundgarden
    Nirvana
    Red Hot Chili Peppers
    Dead Kennedy’s
    Jimi Hendrix Experience
    Credence Clearwater Revival
    The Doors
    Jefferson Airplane
    etc.?

    I’m not a huge fan of all these bands, (and I’m sure someone trendoid poser will make some snarky remark to sound hip since these bands are way too well known and not nearly esoteric enough to be “cool”) but most have had sucessful careers and made some stellar tracks.
24. #24 Peter says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 9:35 pm

    Awesome. I agree, British music is so much more awesome, and for some reason the music listening population there has much better taste than here.

    I must disagree on Oasis though. Even though they’re awesome as a band, they definitely don’t live up to “greatest band of all time.” They’re way too egotistical, and unwilling to change (until the last minute, right before the broke up.) But Radiohead, Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, Floyd, even Libertines and Babyshambles (if they got their shit together). Sweet music.
25. #25 alberto says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 5:18 pm

    Hands down British rock is better than American rock.

    BORN IN THE USA…
    BORN IN THE USA…
    BORN IN THE USA…
    BORN IN THE USA…
    BORN IN THE USA…

    How is that for a great american rock song
    They really put an effort on those lirics.
26. #26 Sammy says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    Alberto,

    If you are going to critique something the least you could do is make sure you spell everything correctly. It is LYRIC not “liric.” Now let’s get down ta’ bidness. I have never been a huge Springsteen fan, or a fan of his in any capacity really. So to judge American music based on ONE bad song is a bit condescending to the rest of American music. I mean are we to go on the premise that “one bad apple ruins the whole bunch?” I for one will not do that. I mean honestly can YOU say that all british written lyrics have all been gems? “Slowly walking down the hall Faster than a cannonball” Yeah that was a real winner there wasn’t? Ha. Seems to me that was just filler, and that is supposedly your BEST band, atleast according to Old-Wizard. Then again maybe I just don’t get the symbolism……yeah I think not. That was just a stupid lyric written by an obviously high Noel Gallagher. Look, The point is you can’t judge American music on one crappy song, just like you can’t judge British music on an ENTIRE CRAPPY BAND, simple as that my friends.
27. #27 Delta says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    Wait, Sammy, are you saying Alberto’s British? It’s unclear if that’s your intent, but due to English not being his primary language, I would assume he’s not.
28. #28 Morty says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 7:07 pm

    This article is racist.
29. #29 Delta says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 10:35 pm

    Morty, how is an article racist when it refers to their opinion on what MUSIC is better from two different nationalities which largely are composed of the SAME RACE? How the FUCK is that racist, you fucking retard?

    It’s one thing to call him an idiot if you disagree on him saying British music is better than American music, but RACIST? Go kill yourself right now to prevent you from ever reproducing. We don’t need you in the gene pool.
30. #30 Fedricco Rabaya says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 10:51 am

    If you ask me, some American songs are very great but what I don’t like is some of their songs in the contemporary times is just pure crap. They don’t last long. I mean, you listen to their songs and after how many months you don’t like them anymore. British music isn’t like that.
31. #31 Fedricco Rabaya says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 10:57 am

    Your comment is being moderated. We are currently destroying the illusion of free speech to which you hold so dear…we are in control.

    Damn i didn’t know this!!!!!

    Don’t worry I’m a Filipino but I am pro British. I love British culture, accent, literature, songs, and movies.
32. #32 Delta says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 11:34 am

    Fedrico…..

    They moderate your comments until it’s approved, to prevent SPAM comments on here. You’ve been approved, so you won’t get that anymore.
33. #33 Alberto says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 4:05 am

    @Sammy

    Actually, I have to confess, you got me on that one.

    I work for a mayor company Music in Mexico city for arroud 5 years in the purchases department. I have to learn about both countries rock. I personally like British Rock, better. The main reason is Because they have more known bands,than USA. Does actually that makes them better? maybe not, but they have a lot of names in the island. American rock is actually pretty good, also believe it or not Latin rock is pretty good, but they have not the same type of marketing behind them as the Americans or British. I’m sure is the same in almost every country in the world.
34. #34 Fedricco Rabaya says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 4:32 am

    Who are the British bands that are famous in the USA today?