British Incursion

"Nevertheless, they have several crucial things in common: their lyrics tend to be uplifting; they lack identifiably English accents, and they avoid British slang unfamiliar to Americans. These attributes are what distinguish their music from another strain of mainstream English pop, which rarely makes it big in the States, even when it should."

In The New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones explores which British pop imports succeed in America and which do not.