Of course they were. Wat’s your point?
I just don’t equate Jamaica with being part of Great Britain, even if they were a commonwealth at one time.
But this is curious to me. Often when people are listing their favourite artists, it is British bands they are listing. Beatles, The Who, etc etc. So its like, “here are the best bands, and they may be British, but American music is best because we started it all”.
But I dont care who started it, I ony care who has the best collection of artists/music.
Its like saying, “Well, I think Ferraris are great, but Ugg from Finland has the best cars ever because he invented the wheel”.
So yes, many styles of music may have originated in America, but which country has the best oeuvre?
I voted America as a knee jerk, then considered the poll again and realised that it’s almost entirely meaningless.
There’s a proliferation of artists from both countries and there’s no way of determining an overall best - even disregarding the subjectivity of the entire question. Which genre are we talking about? I think, for example, the current style of British pop is much catchier, but current American rock is toweringly superior. Our hip hop leaves something to be desired, but trip hop doesn’t even exist in the US.
That said, the origins are irrelevant if the current performers are superlative (cf. Japanese cars).
The OP qasks which bands are better, not more original or where most styles originate. In my - admitedly European - mind there is no contest; Zep, Sabbath, Beatles, Stones, The Who, Queen, etc all rank in my top 10 favourite bands. I think more than half my I tunes is british with maybe 20 percent American…as I said there is no contest.
If you’re just talking rock / pop then there’s no doubt that the Brits were in charge during the 60s / early 70s - probably the most important period were the genre really solidified. The canonical bands have already been listed - Beatles, Stones, The Who, Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, The Sex Pistols, David Bowie etc etc - these are the touchstone artists that have influenced everything and everyone in the past 40 years. Not the only ones of course, but they’re exceptionally prominent in rock / pop. The Brits also produced The Smiths - probably one of only 2 or 3 bands that will merit more than a sentence when the pop music historians of 2070 write the chapter on the 1980s.
That being said, British rock music has sucked for years IMHO. But the fact that it was so strong at the time of greatest creativity and development is what gives those band such status. There’s no point being in a band that’s better than Led Zep today - you’re just a face in the crowd.
Course that’s just one segment of music, albeit a very popular one. All those bands are completely white for example - it’s not difficult to list entire genres of popular music where the British contribution has been pretty negligible.
Up until say 10 years ago most of my music collection was British and Aussie with the odd US thing. In the last 10 years nearly everything I have acquired is American/Canadian very few of the big name British bands of the last decade or so are in my collection.
Brits now winning handily. I predict this poll will swing sharply American in a few hours time.
To the above, add Jimmie Rodgers, Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams.
Overall, America. My top ten favorite rock albums may be predominantly British, but when it comes to all the other music (hip-hop, blues, jazz, country), it’s pretty much all American artists. I mean, who does any of these styles better than the Americans? Plus, as soon as you venture out of my personal rock top ten, you’ll find American bands more than well-represented. I mean, Jimi Hendrix, Sonic Youth, REM, the Byrds, Chuck Berry, Sleater-Kinney, etc.
Like I said, it’s not even close for me. If your taste in music is narrowly defined as pop-rock, then perhaps you could maybe make a case for British music (although, since about the late 90s, I’ve found the US rock scene more interesting than the British one.) Overall, across all genres, it’s America. And I’m not a rah-rah-GO-USA jingoistic person by any stretch of the imagination.
Solely based on post-1963 rock music, plus my love of the British folk rockers, I had to go with the Brits. Overall, though, I’d have to say that the U.S. has the richest tradition of popular music in the world.
It’s interesting to see British rock derided as derivative. American rock, and, to a much larger extent, country music, are themselves highly derivative of British folk music. And most everything America didn’t get from the British Isles, it got from Africa.
Sure, and I note as much above. However, I’d argue that these genres became something completely new in America. The major popular music revolutions of the last century–blues/jazz/swing, rock, hip-hop–all have their roots in America. Sure, they were created by mixing all sorts of influences and traditions (mainly Europe + Africa with a bit of Latin America thrown in), but that’s what makes it distinctly American, this hodgepodge of traditions thrown together to create something completely new.
Yes, but couldn’t it be argued that the UK took the hodgepodge of styles which had comprised American Rock and Roll and combined them with various British influences – eg English and Celtic Folk, Music Hall, the Ska and Rock-steady brought by Caribbean immigrants, the Indian sounds brought by Asian immigrants – and turned Rock into something uniquely British? I think one could also argue that the vast majority of Rock and Roll today in either country owes more stylistically to the British innovators (Beatles, Rolling Stones, Who, Kinks, Zep, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Sex Pistols, Clash, etc.) than to any of the American Rock progenitors. But perhaps I’m putting too much thought into this. Either way, my vote is for UK.
As I said above, if you narrowly define “music” as “pop rock,” (I’m using a very broad definition of “pop rock” here–I mean rock music with pop structures, so bands like Nirvana and Black Sabbath could fit in here along with the Beach Boys and the Beatles) then you can make an argument for the UK. (And I still would probably come down on the side of American music, but it would be very, very close indeed.) But rock music is just a tiny sliver of the music spectrum. Taken as a whole, I think American music is far more diverse and interesting.
American. Whether you’re talking about The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin or whoever of the great great British bands or artists, they are themselves the first to admit that they would be nothing if it wasn’t for American music.
King Crimson too huh?
Prog rock, was, with a few exceptions, mainly a British endeavor (at least thru the middle 70’s).
They could keep it. 
And vice-versa. A quick poll of my iPod says it holds 26 US bands, 7 UK, 5 other - which seems pretty representative of my (indie / guitar-oriented / KEXP-ish, with a garnish of blues) taste, so I have no qualms about voting for the USA. It’s not exactly treason, is it? 
Aren’t you forgetting luminaries like Vaughan Williams? Britten? Elgar? Holst? Sullivan?
And that’s ignoring giants like Handel who settled in Britain.
I’m English, but voted USA! USA! USA! etc