The Fat of the Land, the third album from the Prodigy, the name of a collective centered around DJ-composer-producer Liam Howlett, managed to sell over 2.5 million copies in America despite specializing in a spiky, high-res synthetic sound that made no concessions to pop sensibilities. Perhaps most mysterious of all is the case of an act that crossed over in two separate dimensions, plugging British underground culture directly into American TV and radio. What exactly is it that permits some acts to cross the Atlantic but not others? Pop globalization is a crucial factor, but then again not everything translates: Van Halen and Take That are striking examples of artists neck-deep in platinum and even diamond plaques at home but known only to a niche crowd across the pond. To borrow the term from diplomacy, it’s a special relationship. soul what Lennon and Jagger and Page did for black U.S. But the cross-pollination goes well beyond rock as well: Sade, after her initial success, has been far better appreciated Stateside than in Britain, while in the last ten years artists like Adele and Amy Winehouse have done for black U.S. Jimi Hendrix recorded his albums in London with British bandmates by steeping themselves in black American rock and roll to a degree white Americans couldn’t, the Beatles and Stones became the primary inspirations for an entire generation of American rock artists Zeppelin and Sabbath laid the foundations for American metal American college rock of the ’80s provided vital models for My Bloody Valentine and Radiohead in the ’90s. Rock gets the most attention in this regard: without the ping-pong of inspirations between British and American artists, the history of rock would be impossible to imagine. Since the ’60s, popular music has been immeasurably enriched by the exchange between the United States and the United Kingdom: sharing a common language and roughly equal in inventiveness, the musicians of the two nations have created a more vital culture than either could have done alone. Crossing over is never easy, but its difficulty can be rewarding.
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