Making Britain Great Again: Popular Culture and the British Invasion

Abstract

The 1960s are known as a period in which British pop music took the world by storm. The success of the Beatles in nearly every corner of the world had become the emblem of the “British Invasion”. The chapter investigates how the success of British pop groups abroad (particularly in the US) manifested and facilitated the national consciousness of superiority, and in the process revitalised the motifs of (now cultural) imperialism. In addition, the chapter explores the ways in which the new reference system of a truly international music business, with its transnational markets and networks, modified the making of pop music in Britain and examines how the triumph of black music in the late 1950s and 1960s, the influence of popular music that was made in Britain but had its origins in former colonies, the impact of musicians from the US, and the integration of new global sounds by the late 1960s stimulated the making of Britain’s post-Victorian self-image and paved the way for a “cosmopolitisation” of Britishness. On the other hand, the reluctance of British pop music to depart from the national, and in some ways historical, pattern of identity-building meant that musicians still set themselves apart on the basis of their urban background, for reasons of economic competition, as a reaction to national motifs such as “Merry England”, or to align themselves with a construct of urban working-class identity. The self-presentation of British pop stars, which was considered so vital at a time when pop had come to dominate nearly every sphere of daily life, popularised both old and new images of their home towns on a national as well as a global scale.KeywordsBritish InvasionThe BeatlesPopular musicBritishnessBlack musicRhythm and BluesRock ‘n’ RollMerseybeatLocal identityWorking-class identityMusic marketMusic marketingImage-makingJuvenalisationTransnational pop cultureAmerican music in Britain