"The British Invasion" was a moniker applied by the American media to the huge influx of British pop music, notably Rock & Roll, to American consumers in the 1960s. While it's popularly considered as having gotten underway when British bands started headlining concerts in America, beginning with The Beatles' legendary live US debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, the "invasion" really began the year before. Beatlemania – meaning the entire sociocultural phenomenon, not just the music – first attracted the attention of US news agencies and talk show hosts in November of 1963. It was then that Capitol Records, the American outlet of the group's British label EMI (who'd passed on releasing their debut album and first few singles, letting other labels pick up the rights) finally realized that the Fab Four were, in fact, marketable; and, having made the realization, proceeded to market the band like crazy. Capitol released their first Beatles single the day after Christmas, and that single – "I Want to Hold Your Hand" – proceeded to shoot up the American charts, reaching #1 well ahead of the Ed Sullivan Show appearance and prompting the country's Top 40 radio stations to crank up the hype machine even further.
The key here is that this actually was part of a cycle of cultural exchange, as most of these bands were actually influenced by American rock and blues, including some featured in the Jayne Mansfield film The Girl Can't Help It. Many of these bands took things to the next level, and not just the oft-cited Beatles; consider bands who laid the groundwork for hard rock and heavy metal, such as The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Kinks, The Who, and The Yardbirds. (It may not be a coincidence that the offshore pirate radio boom took place around the same time, giving bands much-needed airplay that The BBC didn't have time for until the launch of Radio 1 in 1967.)
Invasion #1
The British didn't invade themselves, of course, and the term "British Invasion" sounds to British ears like a bad case of Americentrism. In fact, it all begins with an American invasion; not the 1944 invasion of France;, but the period before that when American GIs were, in the common phrase of the time, "overpaid, overfed, oversexed and over here". They brought with them – from an America little touched at home by the war – goods that the bombed and beleaguered British were learning to live without, such as chocolate, chewing-gum, and novelties like nylon stockings. The Yanks also brought a new kind of music with them, and for many Britons this was their first exposure to American R&B and (especially) blues. Blues didn't get played on domestic radio, but after the war was over British enthusiasts could seek it out on the American Forces Network broadcasts from occupied Germany, and from there began to import recordings and try playing it themselves. American blues artists then began touring the UK and growing a following, but it was in 1958 when Muddy Waters came over, bringing with him the electric blues, that the British Blues movement really took off, led by performers like Alexis Korner.A second front opened, largely in Liverpool for reasons that are no accident. Liverpool was the biggest transatlantic port and more heavy manufactured goods in those days were heading west than east. Ships arriving in Liverpool carried recordings of Black music, particularly Soul, and also comics, as ballast and these were eagerly seized on by the locals. The locals formed bands to play Soul covers in underground cellar clubs, sometimes creating their own version of Soul inflected with Music Hall and children's' street songs.
Popular British artists like Cliff Richard had hitherto been billed as homegrown equivalents of American acts; in his early days, Cliff was very much the British Elvis Presley. What was evolving and emerging from the blues clubs in London and the cellars of Liverpool was something new and something that many British people felt was needed; a popular music to call their own.
Even before British artists started scoring big hits across the Atlantic, American music publishers were well-aware that there was a whole music movement happening in the UK, because years-old hits were generating new royalty money from being covered, and the American music establishment welcomed the British groups in part because it opened up a new market: it repackaged Soul and Blues as a "white" music that was "safe" for mainstream American audiences. While there had been some big crossover hits in the those genres by Black artists, in general they were confined to Black-oriented radio and record stores. Now the same material purveyed by smiling British heartthrobs could be fully embraced by white audiences.
Invasion #2
The first invasion may have just been in the 1960s, but it turned full circle when American artists took the sound yet further, such as The Jimi Hendrix Experience (even if only the guitarist and second bassist were American) and early heavy metal bands. This lead to the Second British Invasion in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with Punk Rock, Post-Punk, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (or NWOBHM), New Wave (not to be confused with the heavy metal), and early Alternative Rock. This second wave of British music was brought on, perhaps inadvertently, by MTV. In their early years, MTV was desperate for any music videos they could get their hands on, and it just so happened that most of the music videos of that time were coming out of Britain, thanks to shows like Top of the Pops that helped to popularize the format over there in The '70s. By contrast, most American music videos during the same period were merely videotaped concert performances. MTV threw these British videos on the air, and the bands suddenly saw themselves developing screaming American fanbases virtually overnight. Combine this with the creative slump in American popular music following the anti-disco backlash of the late '70s/early '80s, and British pop and rock took over the American music market.One odd influence here is that, anytime there is a large influx of artists of any media from "across the pond" (such as Oasis, Radiohead, Franz Ferdinand or Arctic Monkeys), it is often labeled as a "British Invasion" by enthusiasts of that particular medium. For instance:
When British Comic Book talents like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison started coming over in 1980s America to make their mark, their tremendous success was likened to being a comic book British Invasion.
On a smaller note you could also annotate the British influence in the American video game scene of the 1980's, with the American-made Commodore 64 being a massive success there (even though most of the games were developed by Americans) as well as the British-made ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC. There was laso a British influence on video games of the 1990s, when Rareware, thanks to the success of games such as Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie, became a household name for most video game enthusiasts and would make of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System the best selling video game console during The 16 Bit Era Of Console Video Games.
Invasion #3
There was a third British music invasion in the late 1990s, after the success of The Spice Girls caused American record execs to snap up any British (or Irish, for that matter) pop artists they could find. Following in the wake of the Spice Girls were 5ive, BBMak, Samantha Mumba, B*Witched, and S Club 7. However, none of them were able to score multiple top 40 hits.Finally, in about 2005, there was a British television invasion on American shores, thanks to the creation of BBC America as well as the rise of video sharing websites and the revival of British juggernaut Doctor Who. Following in Who's footsteps were both of its spinoffs, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, Being Human, Sherlock, Top Gear, Merlin, and Downton Abbey.
Invasion #4
A fourth British invasion started in 2007, when Amy Winehouse's album Back to Black enjoyed huge commercial and critical acclaim, including winning 5 Grammy's in a single night then more than any other British artist had ever won. It also became the highest charting debut album on the Billboard 200 by a British female artist at that point. Back to Black subsequently paved the way for British artists, particularly for female and soul artists to enjoy success on the Billboard charts. Following Back to Black's release, artists like Adele, Duffy, Florence + the Machine, Lily Allen, M.I.A., Mumford & Sons, Jay Sean and Leona Lewis all enjoyed critical and commercial success stateside to different degrees. Many of these artists, including Ellie Goulding and the aforementioned Florence Welch (who lends her name to Florence + The Machine) and Adele, cited Winehouse's success with paving the way for them. In 2009, Susan Boyle's debut album I Dreamed a Dream became the best selling album of the year, hot on the heels of the Internet sensation that was her Britain's Got Talent audition.In 2011 Adele's album 21 became the best-seller of the year and gave her three number-one hit songs and other artists like Taio Cruz, Mumford & Sons, Jessie J, Tinie Tempah and The Wanted started having hits crossing over the Atlantic. The invasion continued into 2012, when an onslaught of British artists invaded the American pop charts. The only one of these artists to join Adele and Mumford & Sons in becoming U.S. superstars were One Direction; in fact, those three artists (along with Coldplay, who have been popular since the decade before, long before the start of this invasion), were the only British acts to have topped the Billboard 200 since 21 was first released. Still, The Wanted, Ellie Goulding, Cher Lloyd, Alex Clare, Ed Sheeran, Olly Murs, Emeli Sande, Labrinth, Passenger, Bastille and John Newman have all scored one top 40 hit each, while Calvin Harris, the other big British breakout, had four top 40 hits (not counting a Rihanna song he was featured on), but all were sung by different people. Artists like Rita Ora, Marina Diamandis, Paloma Faith, Little Mix, The Saturdays, Conor Maynard, Disclosure, and Naughty Boy are also aiming for American stardom.
A list of bands for the first two invasions
can be found at The Other Wiki.
Not to be confused with The American Revolution or the War of 1812, the only occasions of an actual invasion by His Majesty's Armed Forces of the United States. Nor with any military British invasion anywhere else, for that matter.
Notable Artists:
- The Animals
- The Beatles
- Chad & Jeremy
- The Dave Clark Five
- Petula Clark
- The Spencer Davis Group
- Donovan
- Marianne Faithfull
- The Fortunes
- Freddie and the Dreamers
- Gerry and the Pacemakers
- Herman's Hermits
- The Hollies
- Tom Jones
- The Kinks
- Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas
- Lulu
- Manfred Mann
- The Mindbenders
- The Moody Blues
- Van Morrison
- The Move
- Peter & Gordon
- The Pretty Things
- The Rolling Stones
- The Searchers
- The Small Faces
- Soft Machine
- Dusty Springfield
- Status Quo
- Them (with Van Morrison)
- The Troggs
- The Who
- The Yardbirds
- The Zombies
