I think there was really another "British Invasion" of British electronic music and post-punk from 1977-1984 or so...it included punk (The Clash, The Sex Pistols), electronic music (The Eurythmics, Culture Club, Soft Cell, Human League, The Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Cocteau Twins, Thompson Twins, Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, Tubeway Army, The Police), post-punk (Joy Division, The Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure), the New Romantic stuff, maybe Kate Bush,  and stuff like Squeeze and Madness. In fact, one could argue there have been several British invasions, including one in the early '70s that brought prog rock, glam rock, and heavy metal to the U.S., one in the mid-'90s that brought over britpop and alt rock like Radiohead, and another smaller "commonwealth" invasion in the '00s of modern rock bands, including those from Canada.

Don't forget Duran Duran... they were huge!

The British Invasion of the 80's was very successful here in Canada, more so than in America.  Popular 80's Brit artists like China Crisis, Midge Ure/Ultravox, Big Country, Amazulu, Level 42, T'Pau and Johnny Hates Jazz (to name a few) were all more successful here in Canada than in America.  China Crisis never even had a U.S. hit  :\'(

Forgot about them...I think it's legitimate to say British music becomes really popular in the U.S. whenever American music gets extremely mediocre. Like around the early '80s British invasion, American mainstream pop music was pretty bad. It was also pretty tired around the 1971 invasion and the 1964 invasion. The "British invasion"-style American music didn't really decline until L.A. hair metal, a new generation of R&B divas, people like The Bangles and Tiffany, urban contemporary, rap, and American alt rock got big in the late '80s. Even then, Rick Astley, U2, Billy Idol, and George Michael were huge late '80s groups.

The mid-'90s British invasion was fairly small, overall...of course, Oasis, Blur, Pulp, The Spice Girls, Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Radiohead, and other dance and Britpop music were pretty popular, but nowhere near the chart domination level of the early '80s, mid '60s, or the rock dominance of the early-mid '70s. The '00s British invasion is pretty small, comparatively, and mainly consists of Coldplay, The Arctic Monkeys, The Libertines, Franz Ferdinand, James Blunt, Kaiser Chiefs. But overall, it's the smallest one yet.

I would say, in relation to Canada's size, we've had a "Canadian Invasion", with the popularity of The Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Avril Lavigne, etc.

I would say, in relation to Canada's size, we've had a "Canadian Invasion", with the popularity of The Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Avril Lavigne, etc.


and don't forget Nickelback, Sum 41, Simple Plan, Daniel Powter, Shania Twain, Nelly Furtado, Michael Bubl

In Q Magazine they had a rather interesting thing on the 'gap' between the 'Limeys and the Yanks' i.e. between British and American music. They listed those groups, maybe perhaps because they are too imbued with their local sensibilities, never successfully crossed the Atlantic. On the American side these included Maroon 5, Ben Folds Five and a few others, and on the British side Blur, Belle and Sebastian, Manic Street Preachers, Stone Roses.etc. There were many others listed but I forget them. They said Blur was 'too British' for the American market.

I think that there really was a 'British Invasion' in the 80's with the rise and popularity of synth-pop. It just seems as though it were the British that were more willing to embrace the synthesizer as an instrument.
But I think it was difficult for the sounds of BritPop in the early 90's to really break in North America, simply because of the whole grunge movement already happening.
Luckily in Canada, we seem to get an accumulation of the best of the best. So in the late 80's-early 90's we were privy to the British sounds of Happy Mondays, Verve, Pulp, blur et al. as well as American music of Mudhoney, Jane's Addiction, Nirvana etc.
Nowadays with Canadian music it seems to be the indie bands that are making names for themselves. So radios are playing Broken Social Scene, pilate, the Dears in addition to Tragically Hip, Nickelcrack etc. And the best of it all? We managed to 'rid' ourselves of Celine Dion when she moved to Vegas  ;)

I think that there really was a 'British Invasion' in the 80's with the rise and popularity of synth-pop. It just seems as though it were the British that were more willing to embrace the synthesizer as an instrument.
But I think it was difficult for the sounds of BritPop in the early 90's to really break in North America, simply because of the whole grunge movement already happening.
Luckily in Canada, we seem to get an accumulation of the best of the best. So in the late 80's-early 90's we were privy to the British sounds of Happy Mondays, Verve, Pulp, blur et al. as well as American music of Mudhoney, Jane's Addiction, Nirvana etc.
Nowadays with Canadian music it seems to be the indie bands that are making names for themselves. So radios are playing Broken Social Scene, pilate, the Dears in addition to Tragically Hip, Nickelcrack etc. And the best of it all? We managed to 'rid' ourselves of Celine Dion when she moved to Vegas  ;)


Yeah, Belle and Sebastian are a British group that are quite British, and got big actually in the '00s as one of the cornerstones of indiemo in retrospect. The whole '90s "British sound" never got that far in the US...for the aforementioned reason. Blur, Pulp, The Verve, Oasis, etc., which are really "British invasion revival" groups, didn't quite fit in with what was going on in American music in the '90s, and neither did Belle and Sebastian. British '90s techno had about the same level of success.

It's sort of interesting that in the early '80s, just as synthpop was making waves, there was a flourishing American alt rock scene that got alot less attention, including hardcore, noise rock (Husker Du, Sonic Youth, The Replacements), Devo and the B-52s and the rest of the Ohio and Atlanta scenes, and the Talking Heads, Blondie, etc. I like the British invasion scene of the '80s, but alot of it was either too poppy or glum for my tastes, and alot of "britpop" is a bit mannered, and well, British for me.

In some ways, I see the whole explosion of alt rock in the late '80s and early '90s as a reaction to the British invasion electronic music...most of that is so out of place in the '80s British sensibility. I have to say I like both the British synthpop/new wave/post-punk scene and the American alt rock scene, though...