Big beat is a term employed since the mid-1990s by the British music press to describe much of the music by artists such as The Prodigy, Cut La Roc, Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method, and Propellerheads typically driven by heavy breakbeats and synthesizer-generated loops and patterns in common with established forms of electronic dance music such as techno and acid house.

Big beat tends to feature distorted, compressed breakbeats at moderate tempos (usually between 120 to 140 beats per minute), acid house-style synthesizer lines, and heavy loops from 60s and 70s funk, jazz, rock, and pop songs. They are often punctuated with punk-style vocals and driven by intense, distorted basslines with conventional pop and techno song structures. Big beat tracks have a sound that includes crescendos, builds, drops, dramatic sound effects, such as explosions or sirens, and extended drum rolls. As with several other dance genres at the time, the use of effects such as cut-off, phasing, and flanging was commonplace.

William Haislip "Billy" Squier (born May 12, 1950) is an American rock musician. Squier had a string of arena rock hits in the 1980s. He is best known for the song "The Stroke" on his 1981 album release Don't Say No. Other hits include "In the Dark", "Rock Me Tonite", "Lonely Is the Night", "My Kinda Lover", "Everybody Wants You", "All Night Long" and "Emotions in Motion".

Squier was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He is a 1968 graduate of Wellesley High School. While growing up, he began playing piano and guitar, but did not become serious with music until discovering Eric Clapton. When Squier was nine, his grandfather taught him how to play the piano. He took lessons from his grandfather for two years. After he stopped taking piano lessons, he became interested in guitar and bought one from a neighbor for $95. Squier took guitar lessons for a couple of months until he decided to teach himself.^{[citation needed]} He later attended Berklee College of Music.

Billy Squier's first public performance was at a Boston nightclub in Kenmore Square called the Psychedelic Supermarket in 1968 which is where he saw Eric Clapton and the band Cream perform. Squier originally performed with the band Magic Terry & The Universe, which also included Klaus Flouride, who went on to play with the Dead Kennedys. In the early 1970s, he joined The Sidewinders, and played with members including Mike Reed, Alex Phillips, Henry Stern, and Bryan Chase. Squier left the group to form the band Piper, which released two albums in the mid '70s, Piper and Can't Wait, but left soon after. Bruce Kulick of KISS fame played with him during this period also. Upon reviewing the debut Piper, Circus Magazine touted it as the greatest debut album ever produced by an American rock band. Piper was managed by the same management company as KISS, and opened for KISS during their 1977 tour, including the second and third nights of a three-night, sold-out run at New York's Madison Square Garden.