Much of this has to do with the very different sociological emphases placed upon pop music in Britain and France. Whereas music in Britain has always been about the disenfranchised proletariat finding a voice, in France pop music has been a more bourgeois pursuit. It is no surprise that both Air and Daft Punk, the leading lights in French art-dance pop, hail from privileged backgrounds, and that neither is afraid of articulating the more theoretical ideas behind their music. In post-Oasis Britain, meanwhile, there remains a deep fear of intelligence in pop culture.
