Brits Take the Us Charts by Sounding American ; Off the Record

Summary

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BELIEVE it or not, this week there are more British acts in the American top 10 albums chart than at any time since the Nineties.

How did that happen? There have been no Beatles-style British invasions, no one squeezing into a Union Jack dress to spread our culture worldwide. Conquering the most lucrative music market in the world is the dream for hungry singers across the globe but Americans don't normally buy anything except yee-hawing country and booty- shaking R& B. Where did we go right? Unfortunately, it seems we're just getting better at impersonating Americans. Aside from Portishead, whose bleak album, Third, sits at number seven in the Billboard 200 thanks to an absence of more than a decade, there's Sheffield's Def Leppard, whose shiny pop metal has always appealed to chest-beating jocks, and X Factor winner Leona Lewis, who has had any Britishness sanded away from her.

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Brits Take the Us Charts by Sounding American ; Off the Record

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