Pop
The British charts at the opening of the 1980s contained the usual mix of imports, novelty acts, oddities (including rock 'n' roll revivalist Shakin' Stevens) and survivors like Queen and David Bowie, but were dominated by post punk, and then from about 1981 by new romantic acts. There were also more conventional pop acts, including Bucks Fizz, whose light lyrics and simple tempos gave them three number ones after their Eurovision Song Contest victory in 1981. The dance pop music of Frankie goes to Hollywood, initially controversial, gave them three consecutive number ones in 1984, until they faded away in the mid-1980s. Probably the most successful British pop band of the era were the duo Wham! with an unusual mix of disco, soul, ballads and even rap, who had eleven top ten hits in the UK, six of them number ones, between 1982 and 1986. In the second half of the 1980s British pop music was dominated by Stock Aitken Waterman's "hit factory" with the uniformity of their Hi-NRG sound.
Read more about this topic: Music Of The United Kingdom (1980s)
Famous quotes containing the word pop:
“There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today’s pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.”
—Charles Krauthammer (b. 1950)
“Every man has been brought up with the idea that decent women don’t pop in and out of bed; he has always been told by his mother that “nice girls don’t.” He finds, of course, when he gets older that this may be untrue—but only in a certain section of society.”
—Barbara Cartland (b. 1901)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)