Pop music
Cultural divide
Marcus Berkmann
Even in this time of great national pride, when the Cross of St George adorns every Irish pub and Chinese takeaway, and barely a third of the nation, according to current polls, want the royal family chopped up and made into sausages, there's always someone who lets the side down. In this case it's that least loved of institutions, the British record industry. Having boasted for years of its vast contributions to balance of payments, the industry is now taking delivery of a large consignment of chickens coming home to roost. For although British music straddles the globe, making it impossible for anyone to go anywhere without hearing the new Oasis single, there's one important market that has become increasingly resistant to our products. Last month, for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the earth, the American Hot 100 contained not a single record by a British act. A chart once dominated by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd now spurns all things Anglocentric. British newspapers gleefully leaped on the news. Indeed, had I still been writing for one in particular, I'm sure I'd have been rung up at lunchtime and instructed to write 800 words explaining why it was all Tony Blair's fault. Everyone agreed it was a national disgrace and an international humiliation (for £900 plus VAT).
In fact, something like this has been threatening to happen for a while. For several years now British acts have been little more than a token presence in the American charts. Old stagers like Sting and Eric Clapton make occasional appearances, when they rise from their customary torpor long enough to release a new album. In 1997 it briefly seemed as though a new British invasion might be on its way. The Spice Girls were number 1 with ‘Wannabe', The Prodigy's The Fat Of The Land actually entered at number 1, and Oasis were talking up What's The Stan (Morning Glory). But it didn't last, and American acts swiftly reasserted themselves. To be fair, most of them don't make much of an impact over here either. The Dave Matthews Band? Don't make me laugh. Our two nations, divided by a common language, are now pushed further apart by a common musical heritage. In many ways it's remarkable that the Brits have done as well as they have in America before now — because they won't again. There are several reasons for this. One is, simply, the different roles pop music plays in each of the cultures. In America it's still primarily a tribal thing — if you're white and poor and crazily right wing you like country, if you're young and black and disaffected you like hip hop, and so on. There's no cross-fertilisation between any of the genres — once a band plays a certain type of music, that's what they'll always play, because to change is to confuse their audience, who generally only want more of the same. And no listeners are more hidebound than white American teenagers, who have moved from heavy metal to grunge to gangsta rap and nu metal with barely a pause for air. As they don't rebel in real life, they try to compensate by listening to the world's ugliest music. British culture, being more liberal and less terrified, allows its teens more leeway, and so slightly more imaginative musical tastes are formed.
But the basic structural obstacle to British bands who want to make it in the States is American radio. No country in the world has such strict formatting. Simply Red never succeeded there because their records 'sound black', so would never be played on white (sorry, `pop') radio stations. While the fact that Mick Hucknall is white meant their records would never be played on black (sorry, 'urban') radio stations. (This affects some of the more interesting American acts too. Steely Dan couldn't issue the catchiest track from their last album because it had a saxophone solo. A whole stratum of radio stations will only play tracks with guitar solos.) Not that anyone actually buys these singles. As a commercial force in America the single is dead. Since late 1998, the Hot 100 has effectively been a radio airplay chart: only 20 per cent of it is determined by single sales. So unless Brits are willing to tailor their music to suit American radio programmers — and most American acts are happy to do just that — they might as well forget it.
Add to this the American obsession with `authenticity' (compare with the British taste for irony and pop glitz) and America's ever diminishing interest in the outside world (any records containing specifically British cultural references are now dismissed as 'parochial', which has done for Blur, among others), and you reach the current situation. It's not a national disgrace, nor an international humiliation. It's just the way things were always going to be, and even Tony Blair can't be blamed for that.
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