AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Dance
• Noughties Pop
• Rock
• Twenty-First Century

(Vocals, b. 1981) Britney Spears started life, after a short stage career, on American TV’s New Mickey Mouse Club from 1993 onwards. Her debut single ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ (1998) was a masterly slice of melancholy pop that topped the charts – due in no small part to its suggestive video featuring the singer/actress in a ...

• Personalities
• Dance
• Electronic
• Noughties Pop
• Rock
• Twenty-First Century

(Vocals, b. 1986) Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, alias Lady Gaga, made an impact on pop music reminiscent of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera a decade earlier when her infectious, electronic debut single ‘Just Dance’ went straight to No. 1 in the UK and US in 2008. The extrovert New Yorker’s eccentric fashion style further added to her ...

• Personalities
• Hip Hop
• Rock
• Twenty-First Century
• UK Garage

(Vocal group, 2001–04) A staggeringly expansive outlet for a collective of south London MCs, DJs, producers and singers trading in an early incarnation of grime music, So Solid Crew were formed from the popular Sunday afternoon pirate radio shows on Delight FM. Debut album They Don’t Know (2001) has achieved platinum status, although the fortunes of ...

• Styles & Forms
• Nineties Pop
• Pop

If you ask a young music consumer what kind of acts represent pop music, they will undoubtedly reel off a list of teen-orientated, manufactured bands. Pop has come to represent a narrowly focused genre, as far away from the initial, revolutionary rock-meets-pop appeal of Elvis Presley and The Beatles as can be. Since the 1950s, pop ...

• Styles & Forms
• Noughties Pop
• Pop

Although boy bands and girl bands held sway over anglo-American pop for much of the 1990s, the end of the decade witnessed the return of the individual artist. While the likes of *NSYNC, Blue and Sugababes continued to fly the flag for groups, artists such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Pink emerged as arena-filling soloists. The ...

• Styles & Forms
• Noughties Pop
• Noughties Pop Singer-Songwriters
• Pop

While more and more of the mainstream is occupied by heavily manufactured and stylized rock, pop and R&B acts, the emergence of less-demonstrative artists – often from a self-financing small-scale independent background – represents a quiet form of rebellion from the pop norm. The success of mavericks such as Björk and Sinéad O’Connor in the 1990s continues to foster ...

• Personalities
• Pop
• Soul & R&B
• Twenty-First Century

Adele was just three years old when she attended her first live gig with her mother: a Cure concert in London’s Finsbury Park. It was the same year her father, a Welsh plumber, left her mother, practically severing all ties with his daughter in the process. After that first gig, the tot took to the music straight ...

• Personalities
• Pop
• Soul & R&B
• Twenty-First Century

Adele has attracted a diverse, cross-generational, international legion of fans. While it was teenage girls who first clicked onto the singer via channels such as Myspace, their mothers soon grew to love her too. The star has often paid tribute to her loyal fanbase, particularly for accepting her as she is. ‘To all the fans,’ she ...

• Styles & Forms
• Country
• Mainstream Country

At the beginning of the 1970s, the influences in mainstream country music continued to originate from a wide spread of sources, the most dominant being the Nashville sound, which now had strong pop overtures alongside a greater distortion of country music itself. On the other hand, an innovative breed of songwriters were about to be heard, ...

• Styles & Forms
• Dance
• Hip Hop
• Noughties Latin Pop
• Noughties Pop
• Nu Metal
• Rhythm & Blues
• Rock
• Soul
• Twenty-First Century

The impact of rap on the rock market was everywhere to be seen in the first years of the new millennium. White artists, black artists and rock bands attempting to incorporate the style made this area the biggest musical melting pot since the 1950s. The means by which music was accessed switched from CD to downloading from the internet, ...