Brit Pop/Brit Rock

Brit Pop and Rock has its roots in England's northern city of Manchester in the 1980s. The Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses took the gloomy hangover left by post-punk acts like Joy Divison and the Smiths and killed it with drug-charged optimism and self-confident pop songs. The Happy Mondays mingled football hooligans with club kids by fusing the beats of rave and dance-club music with pop and rock guitars. This formula soon crept into the sound of the Stone Roses, who added '60s jangle pop and psychedelia. (Although neither group really grew beyond indie/import cult status in the U.S., the Charlatans found short-lived commercial and alternative radio success on American airwaves.)

By the early '90s, guitar-rock bands -- Suede, Oasis and Pulp -- tapped the mines of '70s glitter-Glam and mod-rock, while a wave of post-punk-sounding bands -- Elastica and Supergrass -- found chart success in both the U.K. and abroad. Throughout the late '90s, the most successful substyle in the U.S. was the northern guitar bands -- like Oasis, and the (now defunct) Verve -- who kept the old Manchester torch lit. Later, in the early 2000s Brit Pop and Rock took an indie-rock turn, and bands like the Kaiser Chiefs, Libertines and Arctic Monkeys gave it a rawer edge.