Why does England have the best musicians in the world?

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This is something I've observed before, but the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the England has brought forth BY FAR the most/best musicians in the world.

The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Queen. And the list goes on. All are Englsih.

I think we can all agree that the majority of good/famous songs written are in English; why are there so few amazing American or Australian rock bands? It's not like there don't live any people there: on the contrary! The US is five times bigger than that of the UK.
Sure there are good American bands/artists: Hendrix (this is of course on a whole other level), the Stooges etc. but not nearly as much as the UK.

And on the other hand, why is all good 'black' music (not try'na be racist here) American? Soul, jazz, blues, rap and hip-hop: 98% of the good English spoked stuff is from the US. Why?

Anyone with me on this?

13 years ago

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Oiseau

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I think there are a number of reasons:

Firstly, when the British empire was disbanded people in the former colonies were offered British passports. This lead to lots of immigration to Britain from places like Jamaica, Africa and India and the big cities in the UK became a mixing pot of different cultures and nationalities who brought with them their own music, which was picked up and modified by uk artists.

Freddy Mercury (frontman of Queen) was Indian and a lot of the bands you mention have strong Jamaican influences in their music.

Also, the UK may be more liberally minded than the US, so are probably more comfortable listening and watching new bands and new types of music. idk

The uk also has nationwide radio stations so everyone in the country could potentially hear new music from another region, whereas the us has mainly local stations where bands may not be able to get their music heard nationwide and instead may have only got their tracks played by their local station.

And apparently english sounds the best in songs because of the mixture of "hard" sounds from its german origins and the "soft" sounds from its french origins, which sounds better than those two sung on their own.

13 years ago

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Ali.

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this is a pretty big reason, i don't think there is anyone in the UK that hasn't listened to Radio 1 at some point.

13 years ago

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Malcolm

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I wrote an essay on this last semester. The essay itself was shit because I suck at writing but some of the quotes I used were pretty damn good.

"Africans used drums for communication by the phonetic reproduction of the words themselves - the result being that Africans developed an extremely fine and extremely complex rhythmic sense."

13 years ago

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belden...

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I think we just have more of a jam band population, phish, dmb, hendrix, even like dylan

13 years ago

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1337

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The dutch have great EDM artists (avb, svd, etc). Germany/austria/switz/france had the great composers of classical. So i'm going to say most of europe for music in general

13 years ago

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1337

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I'm an american and i listen to radio 1 on the reg. it's fantastic

13 years ago

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J.D.

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@th1337

... Deep Purple?

Also rock bands aren't the only kind of musician out there. It's pretty superficial stuff when it comes to describing people as "musicians". Look at where the best vocalists come from and it's pretty much all over Europe, if anywhere it's more Italy and Germany than elsewhere. Where's Itzhak Perlman from? Yo Yo Ma? Isaac Stern? Josef Hoffman? Glenn Gould? There are great musicians from lots of places. England has a culture which promotes the development of musicians who play the kind of music you happen to like to listen to.

13 years ago

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PopsicleStand

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Its one of those deals where if you try to trace stuff as far back as you can, you realize we are all one big human family with not much separating us.

UK Classic Rock-->American Blues--->Black spirituals and poor southerner music influence--->Simple string instruments from whites and drums from Africans/Islanders/Native Americans----> Probably something else I don't know about.

And the cycle goes on.

13 years ago

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corona

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US has produced a greater quantity of awesome punk bands. All that matters.

13 years ago

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james6345789

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Why is jazz mainly in America? Because it's a fucking American style of music!

13 years ago

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Bloc_chain

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@th1337

german trance, nuff said

13 years ago

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pastysmasher

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No called Great Britain for nothing! ha ha

13 years ago

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250r

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i know most people here probably associate dubstep and bass music with people like skrillex and datsik, but when you look at producers who are making the true classic deeper sound of dubstep, the ones in the UK simply cant be touched. Granted dubstep was invented in the uk, but still, its much more rare to hear a truly well produced piece of music come out of the US. This has a lot to do with the american mainstream culture, and how they have always pushed for a harder more agro sound, influenced by the listener's lack of quality speakers.

13 years ago

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TheHamburglar

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lolwut

if we're comparing musicianship, pretty sure any American jazz bop player would take it.

13 years ago

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eldridge

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the question is fundamentally flawed. Music is not a competition, and any of those artists would tell you that, plus its completely objective and everyone has their favorites so its pretty pointless to argue who has the best musicians.

13 years ago

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TheHamburglar

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also, if you're talking strictly classic rock: Hendrix, Allman Bros, CSNY, Grateful Dead, Joplin & Big Brother, Buffalo Springfield, the Doors, Johnny Winter, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Eagles, Doobie Brothers, Marshall Tucker Band, Frank Zappa, Boston, James Taylor, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seeger, Tom Petty...

All-American brah

13 years ago

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250r

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but then just look at metal...

13 years ago

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AlwaysDisagrees

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My favorite bands are Van Halen, AC/DC, and Iron Maiden. Pretty even split.

13 years ago

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Alex_G

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Well the british guys you mentioned were just trying to sound like american black guys. they took the blues concept (made by american blacks) and fused it with the Elvis concept and created British Rock n Roll. So they became great because Americans were great.

Like mentioned above, the Grateful Dead, Hendrix, The Doobie Bros, James Brown, The Doors, Janis Joplin, and many more epic musicians were born on US soil.

13 years ago

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3mania

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The Sex Pistols and the Clash rep pretty hard for British punk. But there would be nothing without the RAMONES... the best US band ever.

13 years ago

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Anathema

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@th1337

dude, harlem was BUMPIN back in the 30s. the savoy ballroom was where it was all happenin, yo.

13 years ago

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corona

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Neil Young is Canadian.

13 years ago

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corona

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they do, along with Stiff Little Fingers and bands like that.

but US had the Ramones, Dead Kennedy's, Bad Brains, The Dickies, mother fuckin Black Flag, Bad Religion, etc etc.

13 years ago

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