Music of the United Kingdom (1970s)
| 1970s in music in the UK | |
| Number-one singles | |
| Number-one albums | |
| Best-selling singles | |
| Best-selling albums | |
| Summaries and charts 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979 |
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| ←1969 | 1980→ |
| Top 10 singles 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979 |
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| ←1969 | 1980→ |
Popular music of the United Kingdom in the 1970s built upon the new forms of music developed from blues rock towards the end of the 1960s, including folk rock and psychedelic rock. Several important and influential subgenres were created in Britain in this period, by pursuing the limitations of rock music, including electric folk and glam rock, a process that reached its apogee in the development of progressive rock and one of the most enduring subgenres in heavy metal music. Britain also began to be increasingly influenced by aspects of World music, including Jamaican and Indian music, resulting in new music scenes and subgenres. In the middle years of the decade the influence of the pub rock and American punk rock movements led to the British intensification of punk, which swept away much of the existing landscape of popular music, replacing it with much more diverse new wave and post punk bands who mixed different forms of music and influences to dominate rock and pop music into the 1980s.
Progressive or prog rock developed out of late 1960s blues-rock and psychedelic rock. Dominated by British bands it was part of an attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility. Progressive rock bands attempted to push the technical and compositional boundaries of rock by going beyond the standard verse-chorus-based song structures. The arrangements often incorporated elements drawn from classical, jazz, and world music. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy. Progressive rock bands sometimes used "concept albums that made unified statements, usually telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme."King Crimson have been seen as the band who established the concept of progressive rock". The term was applied to the music of bands and artists such as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Kate Bush, Soft Machine, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. It reached its peak of popularity in the mid-1970s, but had mixed critical acclaim and the punk movement can be seen as a reaction against its musicality and pomposity.
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