The British Are Coming (Again & Again)! How UK Acts Never Stopped Invading The U.S.

By Eamonn Forde

The eruption of Beatlemania in the U.S., now the focus of the new “Beatles ’64” documentary on Disney+, produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by David Tedeschi, remains the idealized career arc for British bands seeking to make it in America. The doors The Beatles kicked open saw a rush of British bands slipstream them, such as The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks and many others.

This British Invasion became such a cultural benchmark that the phrase was revived in the early 1980s, inevitably termed the Second British Invasion, to explain the MTV-powered success of acts like Duran Duran and Culture Club. The Third British Invasion (allegedly in the early 2000s) was a looser grouping of acts like Adele and James Blunt, had less cultural resonance as a term, but was proof of how big and wide the dream of cracking the U.S. is for UK acts. (And that doesn’t include other unnamed UK invasions like ‘70s classic rock, ‘70s-‘80s British punk, late-‘80s Happy House Madchester scene takeover, mid-‘90s Britpop explosion, drum’n’bass and far more).

This week’s Pollstar’s cover act, Bring Me The Horizon, from Sheffield, are the latest in a long line to make an assault on the U.S. touring market. As the biggest touring market in the world, you cannot claim to be a truly global act unless you have dominated in America. But in 2024, how to tackle the U.S. is very different than how UK acts did it before.

In the 1970s, British acts like Elton John, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin became superstars by touring heavily and relying on widespread press and radio support. By the 1980s, MTV was the catalyst for New Wave and New Romantic acts and rock bands like Def Leppard and U2 (if we can lump Irish acts alongside British ones). The MTV effect carried over into the 1990s for acts like Jesus Jones, Radiohead, The Cranberries (another Irish act) and the Spice Girls.

In the early 2000s, digital distribution and nascent social media steadily changed the rules of engagement. British successes this century include reality-TV band One Direction, Harry Styles (a One Direction alumnus), Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Coldplay, Adele, Arctic Monkeys and Dua Lipa, with a wave of new acts – notably Wet Leg, Fontaines D.C. (continuing that Irish legacy), Charli XCX, PinkPantheress, Sam Fender and The Last Dinner Party – all gathering serious momentum in the U.S.

Now an arena act in the UK, RAYE, a 2024 Brit Award winner, is focusing heavily on the U.S., having recently played the Loreto Theater in New York (as well as the Global Citizen Festival in the city) and appeared at the American Music Awards in October.

Eli Gelernter, RAYE’s U.S. agent at Wasserman Music, says “Her core audience at the beginning of her career were queer people,” and playing Pride events in numerous U.S. cities has been part of her live plot. She steadily built up from 200-cap rooms, to 500- and up to 1,300-cap rooms, as well as securing appearances at major festivals such as Austin City Limits and Coachella.

Wasserman and Wasserman UK synchronize activities so the UK/European strategy for RAYE is echoed in the U.S. “Her chapter is going to be breaking America,” says Tom Schroeder, her UK agent at Wasserman. “Part of that is Eli and I being on the same page. There is a plan that takes us all the way through to 2026. America is a real focus.”

In the last century, live markets were targeted by relentless touring and traditional media support, as well as local agents’ innate sense of what could work in different cities. In the era of social media and streaming, data is creating whole new opportunities and helping formulate whole new strategies for acts tackling the U.S.

“We run data very competently and very carefully,” says Schroeder.

Data has been shaping how Raw Power Management is taking a very different approach with Belfast rapper Jordan Adetunji in the U.S. Dan Jenkins, senior artist manager at Raw Power, says, “The strategy hasn’t been to build the live from the beginning. The strategy has been focused on streaming with a strategy for media and trying to embed him into culture.”

That has meant focusing on club appearances and attaching him to fashion events. “We’ve been purposely staying out of live shows whilst we’ve been building Jordan in this space,” explains Jenkins.

Alongside touring and festivals, showcase events at SXSW remain a priority for UK acts as they can get in front of U.S. agents, promoters, DSP partners and wider media. Chris Tams is director of independent member services and international at record company trade body BPI and is heavily involved in the British Music Embassy showcase platform which has been running for 17 years at SXSW. BBC Introducing, the broadcaster’s platform for new acts, helps program the artists playing there.

“It’s this British calling card to the world,” says Tams, noting that live professionals from around the world come to SXSW, so it is not only a way to reach the U.S. live business.
Acts like Wet Leg, Sam Fender, Skepta, Fat White Family, Everything Everything, Little Simz, Toddla T, Young Fathers and Arlo Parks have all benefited from playing the British Music Embassy stage over the years. It is diverse and cross-genre in its programming.

“Everyone thinks it’s indie guitar,” says Tams of outside perception of SXSW. “Yes, there are a lot of indie guitar bands, but we’ve had classical, bhangra, grime, drill, hip-hop and soul acts. It really is a massively eclectic showcase opportunity.”

In 2024, UK acts are not just facing intense competition among themselves in the U.S. market; they are competing for attention and ticket sales alongside acts from South Korea, Japan, Latin America and Nigeria in a way they never had to in the relatively recent past.

“There’s more competition, but I think it actually makes RAYE stand out,” says Gelernter of Wasserman. “She has fans who live in the K-pop world, the J-pop world, rap, hip-hop, pop, jazz, contemporary. The fact that she can dip in and out of every micro genre and micro group within the music industry is to her benefit. She’s respected across all.”

A major concern for all UK acts going to the U.S. is how to finance their shows there, especially for the initial tours of small venues where they are looking to get a foothold in the market. “We’re having to find income from different places and we’re having to be more creative,” says Wasserman’s Schroeder. “The labels are more passive than they used to be [in terms of providing tour support].”

That means acts are using profits from markets where they are already big to underwrite their touring costs in the U.S. For RAYE, that means a huge investment as she does not want to tour with a scaled-back production for the U.S. just to try to make the numbers add up. “The bit that everyone forgets, including us, is that these are artists,” says Schroeder of RAYE’s refusal to tour with a lesser production.

Brian Message, director of ATC Management, says the cost of visas for British acts touring the U.S. is becoming increasingly prohibitively expensive. “We know that lots of British acts struggle now to get to SXSW, even with the support that they can get,” he says. “You have to try to tackle it nowadays much more from a cultural perspective and a streaming perspective, and demonstrate you’ve got some traction.”

Big U.S. tours are, by necessity, longer – and they cannot be cut back in the way they are in other territories. Schroeder suggests a European tour now has an average of 6-8 dates whereas in the U.S. the average is closer to 25.

What is now happening is that some acts might start off by focusing on just a small handful of major U.S. cities, or even confining their touring to one coast at a time, according to Message.

As the world opens up to musicians outside of the longstanding major markets, there is an argument that breaking America is not quite the priority it was between the 1960s and the early 2000s.

“With smaller acts, we’ve tried to find traction wherever it will be,” says Message. “You’re in a digital world. You’re trying to find fans anywhere, and then you follow that.”

UK acts, for the most part, will still dream of success in the U.S. – even if more international markets are opening up to them. But how they plan their assault on the U.S. live market, and what they can expect from it, is necessarily changing.

“It’s a different game and the business model is different,” says Schroeder. “We’re in a brave new world now. The old metrics, the old techniques and the old tactics are completely redundant.”