Music of the United Kingdom (2000s and 2010s)

Popular music of the United Kingdom in the 21st century continued to expand and develop new subgenres and fusions. While talent show contestants were one of the major forces in pop music, British soul maintained and even extended its high-profile with figures like Joss Stone, Estelle, Duffy and Adele, while a new group of singer-songwriters led by Amy Winehouse and Westlife achieved international success. New forms of dance music emerged, including grime and dubstep. There was also a revival of garage rock and post-punk, which when mixed with electronic music produced new rave.

Rock

Post-Britpop

Post-Britpop bands such as The Verve, Radiohead, and Travis were followed in the 2000s by acts including Snow Patrol, from Northern Ireland and Elbow, Embrace, Starsailor, Doves and Keane from England, with music that was often more melodic and introspective. The most commercially successful band in the milieu were Coldplay, whose début album Parachutes (2000) went multi-platinum and helped make them one of the most popular acts in the world by the time of their second album A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002).

Garage rock revival/post-punk revival

Like many American alternative rock bands, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, several British indie bands emerged, including Franz Ferdinand, the Libertines and Bloc Party, that drew primary inspiration from new wave and post-punk groups such as Joy Division, Wire, and Gang of Four, establishing the post-punk revival movement. Other prominent independent rock bands in the 2000s included: Editors, the Fratellis, Placebo, Razorlight, Kaiser Chiefs, the Kooks and Arctic Monkeys (the last being the most prominent act to owe their success to the use of internet social networking).

Soft rock and singer-songwriter

The decade saw the solo success for British singer-songwriters, including David Gray, Dido making use of acoustic music and remixes, whose breakthrough albums White Ladder (2000) and No Angel (1999) respectively, went multi-platinum. Later in decade a second wave including James Blunt with Back to Bedlam (2003), KT Tunstall with Eye to the Telescope (2004), James Morrison with Undiscovered (2006), and Amy Macdonald with This Is the Life (2007) enjoyed similar levels of success.