The goal for near enough every upcoming band past and present has been, and probably always will be, to make it big in America. You can be the biggest band in the country, in Europe and pretty much everywhere else in the world, but if you haven’t struck gold on the other side of the pond, then you’ll always be viewed as never hitting the bigtime. First, there was the British Invasion of the 60s that kicked down the doors for some of the greatest bands of all time like the Beatles, the Stones and the Who to spread their influence stateside and create a counter-culture that would change the view of young Americans on the dominance of government and religion at the time. After the 60s, great artists such as David Bowie, the Clash, Oasis and Arctic Monkeys would take their art to America with great success (Unfortunately, crap like Coldplay managed to get big there too). But many of our nation’s best loved artists have never been able to replicate their success in America, and I think it’s due to the fact these artists are too distinctly British: whether it’s the subject of their music, their fashion, their aesthetic choices or their general attitude and outlook, some British artists are too closely connected with this little rock we call home to ever really be accepted by America.
A perfect example is Paul Weller. By this point, he is one of the best songwriters Britain has ever produced. With the Jam, he took the raw energy of punk, combined it with the style and sounds of mod culture and wrote songs about the state of the young working class, whilst also criticising the upper classes and conservative sycophants of the time. With Style Council, he indulged his love of soul and RnB and crafted brilliant pop songs of varying genres. With his solo work, he has worked in a wide range of styles and genres, showing his natural talent for writing catchy and engaging songs whilst continuing to experiment and reinvent. He is one of the best artists this country has ever had, and yet if you ask an American who Paul Weller is, they most likely wouldn’t have a clue. Weller has never had much mainstream success in the US: his only single that made it into the US top 40 was Style Council’s “Walls Come Tumbling Down”, which ironically took a lot of its sound from the Motown soul of the 60s. You imagine that Weller, an artist who has always spoken of supporting young British musicians and takes pride in his position as a national institution, isn’t all that bothered that he hasn’t been as widely praised and admired in America. But he serves as a prime example. Look at the ‘Britpop’ bands of the 90s: of all the great bands of the time, it was Oasis that made it big stateside, whilst the rest became stars in their home nation and other parts of the world, and remained cult stars in America for years. It took years for the likes of Blur and Pulp to get the mainstream recognition and place at the top of US festival bills they deserved. But by this point, they’d become nostalgia acts, and their reputations had been built through the years that enough American fans, old and new, would pay to see them. Same goes for Stone Roses when they reunited. In the 2000s, Franz Ferdinand made it big in America when “Take Me Out” got everyone dancing. At the same time, The Libertines had become stars at home but didn’t get a whiff of fame or adulation in America.
So why is it that these bands weren’t successful in America while many of their contemporaries were welcomed with open arms? I think it has a lot to do with the ideologies and mentalities that the two countries have. In America, there is a belief in the ‘American Dream’, where anyone can achieve their goals and ambitions, and that’s reflected through how many American artists’ songs are very optimistic and upbeat; even the songs that are talking about hard and depressing situations have an air of “we’ll get through this” about them. In contrast, in Britain we tend to be very cynical and critical of our situations and ways of life. Part of that is because we, as a nation, like to moan. A lot. We moan about the weather, we moan about our politicians, we moan about our shitty jobs and the fact we have no money. We moan, and moan, and moan; it’s what we do. And for many British artists, that bleeds into their work. You can it see in much more than our music: compare our best TV shows to America’s and it’s just as evident. In every American sitcom, the main character always comes out of the episode succeeding and achieving their goal, fitting into the optimistic American outlook. And look at British sitcoms: in Fawlty Towers, we laugh at a borderline manic depressive constantly struggle to run a hotel. In the Office we take pleasure in a socially awkward everyman trying to be accepted while his dreams are constantly crushed. And in the Thick of It, we laugh at the constant ineptitude and failure of British politicians who have no idea how to run a country. Besides putting some really funny TV shows in a really depressing perspective, they show how Britain has a long habit of deriving entertainment from the downtrodden and the defeated, never anticipating they’ll succeed and expecting them to fail. It’s the same with our films and novels; we never want to see our protagonists succeed, but we always want to watch their journey towards failure.
Much of these British bands’ songs work in this vein, as their songs are perfect as social commentaries but aren’t very inspirational. The Jam’s “That’s Entertainment” is one of the great working class anthems: an observation of the state of lower class life as Weller saw it at the time, it’s a brilliant criticism of the state of affairs in 1980. But the song never gives a notion of how someone can leave these surroundings to find something greater; there is no big declaration of how he’s going to get out of his crap town and find fame and fortune. Weller describes his environment as he sees it, not how he sees a way he can move forward from it. It’s the same with Blur; many of their songs are very critical and cynical of the characters and archetypes that appear in their lyrics, with singer and lyricist Damon Albarn hiding his downbeat attitudes to modern life behind his gift for pretty melodies. Their song “The Universal” sounds like an optimistic and uplifting song, with its soaring orchestra backing and motivational lyrics like “it really, really, really could happen”, but it’s just as cynical as any of their other hits. Inspired by the introduction of the national lottery, the song satirises the false hopes and dreams of British people. Even when he sounds like he’s giving everyone hope, Albarn makes fun of them for it. The more personal and character based songs of these British bands can be just as vicious and cynical. Pulp’s defining anthem “Common People” is a criticism of the wealthy, snobbish rich kids who find hanging out with the lower classes on a night out to be a novelty. Instead of showing the girl his pride in being working class, lyricist Jarvis Cocker chastises the rich girl for hiding her background and trying to be like one of the “Common People” for a night. Instead of showing pride in his own background and showing the rich girl why it’s great to be working class, he attacks her for hiding her background. In all these songs, everything comes back to class and the backgrounds people come from, and how they define us as people and how we fit into English society.
Compare all of this to the bands that have made it in America: their songs do come from places of class and struggles with their environments, but their outlooks are more in line with American optimism. Of all the bands of the Britpop era, Oasis where the biggest in America. And while their songs are definitely influenced by their working class background, every song reflects Noel Gallagher’s ambitions and desire to leave his oppressive surroundings and make something of his self. Lyrics like “you and I are gonna live forever” and “some might say we will find a brighter day” reveal a songwriter with a desire to reach for the top, no matter where he came from. Is it any coincidence that of all Blur’s great songs it was their most American influenced, “Song 2” that ended up being their biggest hit stateside? Or that Albarn’s next group Gorillaz, with a sound that owes itself to American hip-hop, gained more success in America than Blur ever did? Arctic Monkeys had some measure of fame and success in America, but they didn’t hit the jackpot until they made AM, an album that takes a strong influence from the 90s hip hop and G-funk sound of Dr. Dre and Warren G. And of all the bands from the 90s, the one that reached the highest level of fame and acclaim of all of them in America was Radiohead, the most American sounding of the lot.
It relates just as much to the references of places and people that many of these purely British bands use in their lyrics. One of the great British bands, the Kinks, gained fame in America with hits like “You Really Got Me”, a brilliant song but one that has a very general subject that’s found in so many other songs. Their work through the rest of the 60s wouldn’t gain nearly as much attention, as they focused on specifically British subjects and topics. Their songs are like a map of England translated into pop music; songs like “Waterloo Sunset” and albums like Village Green Preservation Society are songs that are tied to their place and time, and can’t really be consumed in a different context. Hell, this is a band that once wrote an entire album about the reign of Queen Victoria and the fall of the British Empire: how much more English can you get than that? If you come from a small town in England, these songs mean something to you because they’re associated with things you remember from your own life. If you grew up in somewhere like New York or Chicago, these songs wouldn’t mean anything to you. The Libertines were similar through the historical figures they referenced throughout their works, regularly making reference to poets like Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde, and the myths and stories of Albion. Figures and stories like this are regular touchstones of British classrooms, but aren’t as prominent in American society. It also goes back to the ideologies both nations stand by. Waify, artsy figures who wrote pretty words like Byron and Wilde aren’t going to mean much to most Americans when their history books are filled with outlaw cowboys and heroic war heroes.
In the end, not a lot of this really matters. Talent wins out after all, and as long as an artist is able to create art the way they want and people can consume it, then that’s what is most important. But it’s interesting how a country’s ideology can affect the music its people listen to, whether they realise it or not. Through the environment and class we’re raised in, we’re taught to identify with certain individuals and situations, and it affects how people of other cultures view an individual’s work based on their background and the story’s they tell.
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