A Dance Dance Revolution: Michael Jackson in the United Kingdom

Music has played an important part of the British culture in the 20^th and 21^st Centuries. Artists such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Queen, and Michael Jackson have shaped British popular culture through their hit albums and hot singles. But as the age of technology dawned in the early 1990s and personal computers flew off the shelves and into homes and libraries across the globe, a new, more electronic sound began to dominate the electronic clubs of Britain. Electronic music, though it goes by many names, has single-handedly taken the British music scene by storm, and has become the most popular form of music in Britain. The genre is a part of daily life in the United Kingdom. Whenever a cell phone rings or a commercial airs, electronic music is there; whenever a car with its stereo drives by or a man on a train sets his Ipod a bit too loud, electronic music is there. Electronic music, which began as an underground music genre in the late 1980s, was embraced by British record executives in the early 1990s and propelled by mainstream artists such as Michael Jackson in the mid 1990s and has become the most popular and most commercially successful brand of music in the United Kingdom.