Uk or Us: which country gave the biggest contribution to contemporary music?

• Lonnie Donegan!!!! (influential to a lot of US and UK peeps, including the Beatles!!!)
• Alex Harvey!!!
• That bloke from The Sweet!!!!
• Nazareth!!!! (apparently the lead singer was very influential on US metal vocal styles, including that of Axl Rose and David Coverdale!!!)
• Early Simple Minds!!!!! (1979-1982ish)
• The Jesus & Mary Chain, and loads of Greater Glasgow guitary bands like BMX Bandits, Soup Dragons, etc. (apparently rather influential on US alternative folks liek Sonic Youth, etc)
• Loads of ace ravey bands like The Time Frequency, QFX, and in particular Q-Tex, featuring one Scott Brown, who is massively influential on the Euro hardcore scene having kick-started "Happy" Gabber and "bouncy" techno, (a precursor of a lot of todays "eurotrance"!!!) and speedcore (gabber + heavy metal guitars!!!)
• Loads of not-too-smug house/techno folks like Slam, Limbo, etc. (the former introduced the world to Daft Punk!!!!

It looks like Scotland's jolly good at delivering undergound sounds that influence underground scene elsewhere whilst delivering overground turgid slop like Del Amitri, Deacon Blue, Danny Wilson, etc., to keep the Scottish media happy, and keep the pressure of the underground!!!!!!!

Wot about you folks down South, BTW?!?!??! I'm sure there's a lot you can be proud of down there... (eg Jungle, Garage, hardcore, etc.)

Old Fart!!!!!!!

Obviously the US is more influential - the UK has rarely invented anything new. We are much better at taking stuf and tooling it in to finely honed, quirky shite. Which may then feed back and influence US bands - but nowhere near as much as coming up with the basic stuff in the first place.

Oh - don't forget the Carribean.

Er... Right there at the end?!?!? (Next to Del Amitri?!??!)

Old Fart!!!!!!

However, the UK has the upper hand for bands bragging about being the world's best (do they still do that ? I stopped reading British mags about 10 years ago).

In terms of 'contemporary' meaning what's happening now it's the US too. The big thing about the second half of the 90s was the US rediscovering an ability to produce awesome pop singles and mix things up genre-wise. American pop music is better now than it's ever been, is my hunch. British pop music has garage and not much else.

Indie is slightly less moribund in the States possibly.

Europe is still better at producing electronic music, though not by as great a distance as everyone seems to think.

In terms of listeners' attitudes to music though I'd take the UK by a mile.

This is a really hoary old a.m.a. debate, I recall.

And the stupid twat who said Australia deserves to be shot. Like all Australians.

Secondly, Patrick the only person I know who seems to specialise in wimpy British indie pop *and* technoid US R&B is Tom. The only r&b/soul/hip hop that other wimpy Brits seem to like are groups like Jurrasic 5, Angie Stone, Deltron 3000, Jill Scott, etc. Perhaps Freaky Trigger is skewing your perceptions.

But the UK top 40 is indeed open to a way larger variety of music. In the US by now, the only types of music in the pop charts are schlock ballads, r&b/hip hop and very tepid guitar-rock of the Goo Goo Dolls kind. Plus the occasional country song that never makes it past # 30.

Crikey, if your memories of UK pop end at the absolute nadir of 80s pop, then perhaps it's no surprise that you think the US is better!!!! There's been tons of stuff happening since then, inccluding the whole rave thingy, which, given the way the techno/house scenes were at in the US in 1988, we can safely claim to have co-invented with the rest of Europe!!!! There are tons of ace hardcore tracks from 1991-1992 that saturated the UK charts, before jungle, garage, gabber, etc. And note the number of much more up- tempo and intricate US R&B stuff these days that appear to have UK Garage influenced beats!!! Craig David's even appearing on one or two US R&B records these days!!!

The point made by some other dude about UK/Europe being very good at re-selling US stuff back to them is pretty valid, but I would argue that usually by the time it's back on US soil, it's been warped out of all recognition!!!! US folks might have invented the house/techo/garage axis, but even by the early 90s, the European equivalent had absolutely flip all to do with the sound pioneered in the US... Compare "Acid Trax" with Kick Like a Mule's "The Bouncer" (a UK top 10 hit!!!), or T99's "Anastasia" (ditto) with "Strings of Life"- they're obviously completely different!!!!!! No wonder Derrick May has subsequently disowned the UK/Europe rave sound...

Going back even further, the 60s "British Invasion" was mainly composed of "blues/beat" groups who didn't actually sound very "bluesy" (in the original sense) at all!!!

And as for the impression that all UK folks are into "soft" hip-hop like Jurassic 5, etc... That should read "UK music journalists"!!! Actually, the more in-your-face stuff is actually very popular in the UK, as evidenced by the recent Wu Tang top 10 in the UK.. Even an early NWA interview in the Melody Maker finds Ice Cube talking about coming to the UK to tour, and that knows that "they're into rugged hip-hop and [...] they don't like no soft shit." And there's also the opening of Public Enemy's "It Takes a Nation of Millions...", recorded live in... the London Hammersmith Odeon!!! Most of the journalist-led coverage of hip-hop however, tends to be based around examples of the genre that tend to settle better with the more rock- based sensibilities of the older journos in the big name rags, but even then, there much more coverage of the not-so "old skool" stuff in most mags these days...

Old Fart!!!!!!!!!!!

Pound for pound the UK's contributions are incredible, but the US is an 8,000 ton gorilla. I think our indy bands are largely influenced by UK acts but at the chart level it's at an all time low. Europe, particularly Germany, has now entered the mix in a way that it really never has before (sure, Kraftwerk, Italian disco, Laura Branigan), so things might get slightly more interesting.

You forgot Runrig.

Which country is responsible for the third biggest contribution, I wonder?

1. Every other country in the world
210. England
211. USA
212. Norway

Yeah, I'll agree with Germany, if only for Scooter and Rammstein.