Positioned between the psychedelic and counter-cultural music of the late 1960s and the punk and new wave styles of the late 1970s, early 1970s British popular music is often overlooked in pop music studies of the late 20th century, but it was, in fact, highly diverse with many artists displaying an eclecticism and flair for musical experimentation. 'Progressive pop' artists such as Roxy Music, David Bowie, the early Queen, the Electric Light Orchestra, 10cc and Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel successfully straddled the album and singles markets, producing music that often drew on a variety of different musical styles and traditions. Similarly, such artists often set new benchmarks for songwriting and production, utilizing the full potential of the rapidly expanding studio technology of the era to produce albums of highly diverse material featuring, in some cases, special studio-crafted effects and soundscapes that remain unique to this day.

This book considers the significance of British progressive pop in the early 1970s as a period during which the boundaries between pop and rock were periodically relaxed, providing a platform for musical creativity less confined by genre and branding.

Andy Bennett is Professor of Cultural Sociology in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia. He has written and edited numerous books including Popular Music and Youth Culture (2000), Music, Style and Aging (2013) and Music Scenes (2004), as well as the forthcoming Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music and Youth Culture. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Sociology (the journal of The Australian Sociological Association) between 2009 and 2012, and is currently a member of the Editorial Boards for the journals Cultural Sociology, Journal of Youth Studies, Continuum, Popular Music & Society, Rock Music Studies, Sociology Compass, Perfect Beat and Canadian Journal of Popular Culture. He is a Faculty Fellow of the Yale Centre for Cultural Sociology, an International Research Fellow of the Finnish Youth Research Network, a founding member of the Consortium for Youth, Generations and Culture and a founding member of the Regional Music Research Group.