You may have seen this recent Radio 2 countdown of the Greatest British Groups ...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2024/radio-2-ultimate-british-group-result
... which is all pretty predictable.
About 10 years ago, I made my own such list. Although it has a fair bit more indie, it's hardly significantly more interesting and diverse, I regret to say.
https://101songs.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-great-british-band-its-official.html
The Radio 2 list has no black artists (apart from Mel B in the Spice Girls), only two primarily female groups (though also Fleetwood Mac and The Beautiful South), and only one, the Manics at 30, from anywhere but England.
No doubt if it had been compiled by something other than Radio 2 listeners, the list would have been a little more varied, but one can hardly complain. It all makes solid sense. They're all - nearly all - very successful groups with long and varied discographies.
Anyway, that's all by the by. If I was in a different mood, maybe I'd analyse why the mainstream history of British music remains, primarily, the story of suburban middle-class boys, but, that being so, I started thinking about the Rolling Stones, who were second on my list and third, behind Queen, on this list, and I thought, well, the Rolling Stones are one of the least British of the great British bands (Fleetwood Mac, who are 5th, being barely British at all), and that is probably a factor in their vast and lasting success. Only for a brief period was their something strongly British/Londony in their music.
And then, I thought, they were at their best when they were quite British ... and I started thinking about their best ... and then, the question became .... what's the interesting bit?
What's the interesting bit about the Stones, or, if you will, the bit that is hard to explain? If you had to say just one thing ... i think the interesting bit is just how good their songs were for a short while... which sounds completely stupid. i know. But people talk about them starting out as blues copyists, they talk about the sexual magnetism of Jagger (the weird dichotomy of Jagger is the second most interesting bit), the drugs, the danger, the deaths, the survival, the comradeship, the arena tours, all that, but the interesting bit, the bit that makes less sense than anything else, is just how good those songs were for a while ... Gimme Shelter, Street Fighting Man, She's a Rainbow, Sympathy for the Devil, Tumbling Dice, You Can't Always Get What You Want ... i mean, those are just incredible songs which burst with range, depth, imagination, beauty, darkness. And i guess it's stupid to say "how did the band who sang 'Get Off My Cloud' sing 'Gimme Shelter'? because they're both great songs, and just as silly to say "and then how did they end up singing 'Start Me Up', because that's a good song too, but there's a direct line from 'Get Off My Cloud' to 'Start Me Up', and 'Gimme Shelter' is something else ...
Maybe it's just me, I wasn't that impressed by the Stones when i was young, the footage of them on Sounds of the Sixties, the stuff they played on the radio, i thought they were ok, but didn't really get it. I think my favourite was 'Get Off My Cloud', actually .... And then i heard 'Gimme Shelter' and 'Street Fighting Man', and I finally got it, the extra level the band had ... maybe it was Mick Taylor ...
... anyway, I could go on about the Stones, but i think ...
what's the interesting bit? ...
is a good question about any band. Imagine someone who is not into rock'n'roll but fancies themselves as smart is trying to get to grips with all the big acts, without actually listening to them, and they asked you, tell me, in one sentence, what's the interesting bit ...
Now i'm torn as to whether to go through all those bands and say what i think the interesting bit ... i'd imagine it's different from what other people think the interesting bit is sometimes, and sometimes it's just the same...
no, I won't do that. I'll just do a playlist of one song from each band ... i mean, that's ok, isn't it?
Penny Lane - The Beatles
Don't Stop Me Now - Queen
Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones
Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd (a band about whom there is no interesting bit ...)
Songbird - Fleetwood Mac
Kashmir - Led Zeppelin
Patience - Take That
Slide Away - Oasis
Yellow - Coldplay
Can't Get it Out of My Head - ELO
Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who
Enjoy the Silence - Depeche Mode
Down in the Tube Station at Midnight - The Jam
True Love Waits - Radiohead
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore - The Smiths
Turn it On Again - Genesis (i mean i don't know, even tho Best of Genesis was one of the first tapes i ever bought ...)
Suburbia - Pet Shop Boys
In Between Days - The Cure
The Deal - Stephen Duffy (for Duran Duran ... sorry, i just can't)
My Girl - Madness
The Promise - Girls Aloud
Ol' Red Eyes is Back - The Beautiful South
Days - The Kinks
You Win Again - The Bee Gees
Edge of Heaven - Wham!
Death or Glory - The Clash
Badhead - Blur
Stop - Spice Girls
So Lonely - The Police
Prologue to History - Manic Street Preachers
The test for whether it is a good list they have created is that this is not a fun, interesting, playlist, is it? Ah well ...
Hmm. I take your main point, but I do think that a) you could make a pretty vibrant playlist using 1 song from this list of bands if you wanted to but b) BECAUSE it is that list of bands, it would always look bland on paper. But maybe there's some inner truth to the idea that any band mainstream enough to appeal to a mass audience just does not have anything really 'interesting' in them at all? Or in some cases, what they did was SO interesting everyone else copied it and it has become ordinary?
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