The term Second British Invasion refers to British music acts that became popular in the United States during the 1980s primarily due to the cable music channel MTV. While acts with a wide variety of styles were part of the invasion, New Wave and New Wave influenced acts predominated.
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The term "British Invasion" was used in the middle 1960's to describe a wave of English Rock and Roll acts that dominated American Music Charts during that period.[1]
In the late 1970s and early 1980s music from the United Kingdom was informed by the after effects of the "Punk/New Wave"[2] revolution. In 1979, a single by The Police, "Roxanne", cracked the top American 40. This was followed by modest chart successes for Elvis Costello, The Pretenders, Squeeze, and Gary Numan. Scripps-Howard news service described this success as an early stage of the invasion.[3]
Music videos, having been a staple of British music television programs for half a decade, had evolved into image conscious short films.[4][5] At the same time, pop and rock music in the United States was undergoing a creative slump due to several factors, including audience fragmentation and the effects of the anti-disco backlash.[4][6] Videos did not exist for most hits by American acts, and those that did were usually taped concert performances.[4][5] When the cable music channel MTV launched on August 1, 1981, it had little choice but to play a large number of music videos from British New Wave acts.[4] At first, MTV was only available in small towns and suburbs. To the surprise of the music industry when MTV became available in a local market, record sales by acts played solely on the channel increased immediately and listeners phoned radio stations requesting to hear them.[4] Also in 1981, Los Angeles radio station KROQ-FM began the Rock of the '80's format which would make it the most popular station in that city.[5]
On July 3, 1982 The Human League's "Don't You Want Me" started a three week reign on top of the Billboard 100 charts. The song got considerable boost from MTV airplay and has been described by the Village Voice as "pretty unmistakably the moment the Second British Invasion, spurred by MTV, kicked off".[7] The September 1982 arrival of MTV in the media capitals of New York City and Los Angeles led to widespread positive publicity for the new "video era".[4] By the fall, "I Ran (So Far Away)" by A Flock of Seagulls, the first successful song that owed almost everything to video, had entered the Billboard Top Ten.[5] Duran Duran's glossy videos would come to symbolise the power of MTV.[5]
Early in 1983, radio consultant Lee Abrams advised his clients at 70 album-oriented rock stations to double the amount of new music they played.[5] During that year 30% of the record sales were from British acts. On 18 July, 18 of the top 40, and 6 of the top 10 singles, were by British artists. Overall record sales would rise by 10% from 1982.[5][8] Newsweek magazine ran an issue which featured Annie Lennox and Boy George on the cover of one of its issues with the caption Britain Rocks America – Again, while Rolling Stone would release an "England Swings" issue.[5] In April 1984, 40 of the top 100 singles, and in a May 1985 survey 8 of the top 10 singles, were by acts of British origin.[9][10]
New Music became an umbrella term used by the music industry to describe young mostly British, androgynous, technologically oriented artists. Many of the Second Invasion artists started their careers in the punk era and desired to bring change to wider audience. This resulted in music that while having no specific sound was characterized by a risk taking spirit within the context of pop music.[5][10] Veteran music journalist Simon Reynolds theorised that, just as in the first British Invasion, the use of black American influences by British acts such as Wham!, Eurythmics, Culture Club and Paul Young helped to spur their success.[5]. British rock oriented acts that knew how to use video such as Def Leppard, Simple Minds and Big Country became part of the new influx of music from Britain.[3]
All of this activity and the unusual high turnover of artists in the charts caused a sense of upheaval in the United States. Commentators in the mainstream media credited MTV and the British acts with bringing color and energy back to pop music, while rock journalists were generally hostile to the phenomenon because they felt it represented image over content and that the "English haircut bands" had not paid their dues. Great Britain initially embraced what was called "New Pop". However, by 1983, the song "Rip It Up" by Orange Juice and "Kill ugly pop stars" graffiti were expressions of both a backlash against the Second Invasion groups and nostalgia for punk.[5] According to music journalist Simon Reynolds a majority of acts that signed to independent labels in 1984 mined various rock influences and became an alternative to the Second Invasion. Reynolds named The Smiths and R.E.M. as the two most important "alt rock acts" among this group noting that they "were eighties bands only in the sense of being against the eighties".[11]
As the 1980s wore on, American rock and heavy metal music acts learned how to market themselves using video.[12][5] Eventually, this led to decreasing visibility for New Music. By 1987, New Music exposure on MTV was limited to the program The New Video Hour.[12]