Let’s try again: blogger just ate a massive post where I discussed Fred‘s excellent commentary on the English Tape. In summary:
1. Tape not a summation of what it is to be English, but of how pop has approached the qn.
2. Side 1 is the Q-approved version of pop ‘Englishness’: slightly ironic, mostly white, poppy and clever, melodic. Side 2 will be more fragmentary and diversionary. I hope.
3. England has a lot more different local identities than you’d expect from a small country. But every country looks different from the inside and homogenous from the outside.
4. I chose England rather than Britain as the focus because in a devolutionary era the qn of what it is to be English is being asked more and more loudly.
5. It would be possible for someone outside America to make an American tape (see comment #3) – but such a tape would end up being the history of pop itself.
6. Fred’s blog rocks.