A kingdom comeback

Band AID 20’s November remake of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” brought 52 U.K. stars together to record a rather bad song for a very good cause.

Like the 1984 original that sparked USA for Africa and Live Aid, it was fired up by concern for millions suffering poverty, hunger and the terror of war. Yet on a more trivial level, it had an entirely unplanned significance for pop and rock in the British Isles.

It drew in all the generations and genres of our musical history, legends to novices: Sir Paul McCartney, Bono, Radiohead, Robbie Williams, Dido, the Darkness, Sugababes, Dizzee Rascal, Jamelia. It was one of those moments when time stands still and has a good look around. It changed the way British music feels about itself.

The BBC’s instant documentary film of the sessions identified the transformational strand of the story by zooming in on Joss Stone, a 17-year-old white soul singer.

Greeted at the studio gate by “Saint” Bob Geldof, who 20 years ago co-wrote the song and launched Band Aid, she didn’t know who he was. She asked the cameraman, “What’s his name? Gandalf?”

Likewise, she knew little of the Ethiopian famine that Live Aid, more than anything else, set before the world’s conscience in 1985. Then Geldof showed the old news film of refugee camps, and Stone sobbed her heart out.

Next, Geldof introduced a woman who had been one of the emaciated children seen in the report but now is at a university studying agriculture. An hour later, Stone was singing her heart out, her stylish vocal uplifted by knowing so much more about what music might mean -- and do.

Well, emotions overwhelm objective judgments on such occasions. But as the record outsold the rest of the Top 75 U.K. singles combined in its first week, it seemed to symbolize the fresh sense of purpose, confidence and even integrity that had been growing in British music of late.

And this is where the U.S. comes in. For some years, the domestic market dominance of Simon Cowell / “Pop Idol” hyper-hyped nonentities had undermined deeper musical passions with a sensation verging on self-disgust. But suddenly artists began to look outward again: with politicized concern, but also, when it came to America, with fervent ambition. Though not to “invade.” You’ll have to forgive and forget on that one; we’ll never say it again, honest.

Looking across the pond

At the start of 2004, love-them-or-hate-them hard-rock pranksters the Darkness set the tone. Preposterous frontman Justin Hawkins donned the pinstriped leotard of utter seriousness to announce, “We’re going to break America.” And they sort of did with their debut album, “Permission to Land.” Less brazen but equally keen to put the work in, arty guitar pop group Franz Ferdinand barreled through tour after tour.

Behind them, young Brits from every mainstream musical tendency formed a disorderly queue for the chance to catch American eyes: serious soul-searching rock the Coldplay way from Keane and superior songsmiths Snow Patrol; Anglo-R&B; from Jamelia and smart harmonizers Mis-Teeq; intelligent post-Clash punk from the Libertines, Futureheads and the Others; proper indie oddness from the Zutons, Little Barrie and Graham Coxon (who used to be Blur’s guitarist).

Also: soft wistfulness from Katie Melua, Jem and K.T. Tunstall; rocking post-Britpop beats from Razorlight and Bloc Party (already “the new Franz Ferdinand,” but give ‘em a break); cockney hip-hop from the Streets and Dizzee Rascal; dance-derived guitar rock -- the Stone Roses inheritance -- from Kasabian.

But how did we pick ourselves up out of a mire where the only British Isles albums that America might be expected to embrace were Beatles repackagings and occasional effusions from such old heroes as Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart and U2?

The first positive was a negative. The U.K. mass infatuation with electronic dance sounds waned. At last, all that machine music is on the fritz and your correspondent, for one, is not lending his screwdriver.

As Alexis Petridis, pop columnist of the Guardian, wrote recently, “Clubs, drugs and house music were such big business that they were widely assumed to have changed British youth’s leisure habits forever.” He reckons dance music succumbed to a tangle of commercialism and obsession with “cool” -- which played out as pure farce when taste-making London club Ministry of Sound launched its own range of clothes, then decided that anybody wearing them would be barred from its chic portals.

So human beings were back. With the TV star-making shows starting to lose their grip too, the core British pop identity, handed down from the Beatles and the Kinks, could break free from the dumbocracy of sequencers and celeb culture.

Brains were back too. The Streets wrote a whole album, “A Grand Don’t Come for Free,” about an eventful walk to the shops to return a rented DVD and get a few quid from an ATM. Between drug scandals and breakup/reunion dramas, the Libertines completed a second album of sharp commentary on U.K. youth in the Noughties. A song called “Campaign of Hate” pinpointed the latest variants on our traditional class hypocrisies: “White kids talking like they’re black / Rich kids dressing like they’re poor.” “Time for Heroes” scoffed at our surrender to Americanization: “There are few more distressing sights than that of an Englishman in a baseball cap.”

Stirred up, guys with guitars decided they could steal the dying dance world’s idea of playing unannounced and often illegal raves wherever they fancied. Bands called it “guerrilla-gigging.” The Others claim to have started it, but who knows? The point for unsigned bands was an illicit thrill, an assertion that music could break away from the industry machine -- while at the same time, not to be Pollyanna-ish here, trying to grab that industry by the lapels and demand recognition.

Of course, the hot new names wanted the credibility too. Razorlight played on the roof of an East London pub, the Bricklayer’s Arms. The Libertines’ Pete Doherty, during down periods when he was neither in rehab nor with the band, would invite groups of fans ‘round to his flat to hear a solo set -- then charge them.

This fresh Brit musical identity became embodied in cartoonish form via the cult of the “chav,” a term probably derived from the Gypsy word for “child.” He’s an urban lad, wears cheap trainers, cheap shell-suits, cheap gold-plated jewelry (hence the name of a top chav band, Cardiff’s Goldie Lookin Chain). Like all the best British heroes, he’s a bit naff, a bit useless, just not much good at anything really. An archetypal chorus from the Streets goes, “Today I have achieved absolutely nowt / In just being out of the house I have lost out.”

Chav culture is the self-mocking antithesis of bling-bling. Wholehearted in a hangdog way, it appeals across the board because it values base metal and puts gold in its place.

That, then, is the new British music community (and it’s not only charming, it’s commercial: Despite the illegal downloads onslaught, all-time-record UK album sales were announced for the 12 months to September). But the brotherhood-sisterhood isn’t twee or pious. The togetherness marked by Band Aid often breaks down into old-fashioned slagging matches. During 2004, the Darkness was particularly assiduous in affronting everyone from combative Oasis to inoffensive Keane. But it was all hot air -- “handbags at 20 paces,” as we say -- with a knowing eye for the tabloid gossip pages.

In sum, the British music scene is alive again, and a laugh again, but with some depth and substance too.

While most of the artists mentioned here will be pressing their claims in the U.S. next year, it has to be said that Coldplay remains the smash-hit hope of the team, with its third album due in March. Among other star to semiestablished names, Radiohead is taking the year off and the Libertines seem to have split permanently, but the Rolling Stones, Oasis, David Gray, Damien Rice, Franz Ferdinand, Snow Patrol and even Robbie Williams should be in there pitching their new efforts.

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Keep your eyes -- and ears -- on all of these

Here are Phil Sutcliffe’s annual recommendations of five British acts to watch in the new year.

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Razorlight: Darkness-style, frontman Johnny Borrell declares, “I want America, and I’ll have it.” Not diffident chavs then, Razorlight has a fiery sense of purpose -- and at least a few sharp tracks (“Stumble and Fall” its addictive best) on its “Up All Night” debut. The band plays the El Rey on Jan. 27.

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The Zutons: Dazzling diversity on the Liverpudlians’ debut, “Who Killed the Zutons?” It includes the Queenly anthemic “You Will You Won’t,” the funk-rocking “Long Time Coming” and the gentle “Not a Lot to Do.” Four U.S. tours in ’04 proved they’re dedicated, while their strategists shrewdly snagged a Levi’s ad spot for their song “Pressure Point” and a showcase gig at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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Adem: Oddly, U.K. singer-songwriting is both overpopulated and generally a magnet to the untalented. Franz Ferdinand’s Domino labelmate Adem is one exception who gracefully sidesteps suffocating prissiness and introversion. Boasts a harmonium he bought from an American flea market for 15 bucks.

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Kasabian: Leader Tom Meighan, third from left, embodies goodtime rock ‘n’ roll spirit. They love to play, and they have that passion for America. Watch out for beats-and-guitars guerrilla-gigging on their long tours in February and (probably) May. Piratical Meighan warns, “We’ll be breaking into radio stations and forcing them to play our records.”

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Jamelia: Fluent, dynamic R&B; singer who had a big U.K. hit with “See It in a Boy’s Eyes” (her co-author: Coldplay’s Chris Martin). Chose to come to L.A. in December to write songs for her second album, due in September.