HANG out the bunting - Private James Blunt is number one in the US charts. The fact that he is the first British act to top the charts Stateside since 1997 - and that was only with pantomine freak Elton John's Diana song - has prompted the British government to launch a "taskforce". (Last recorded taskforce: The Falklands War).
Last week the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Alan Johnson, held a rather pointless press conference to announce a range of new initiatives to help British music acts break into the US market. The person who should have been launching this new programme, culture secretary Tessa Jowell, was otherwise occupied trying to save her career.
This whole government getting down with the music kidz thing has to be put into context. There you had Johnson last week saying: "From the Beatles, through David Bowie to Coldplay, the UK music scene has always led the world. But we have not always capitalised on our talent to break America." Just a political generation earlier and the equivalent would have been some Conservative minister during Thatcher's regime saying: "The Smiths and The Jam are the embodiment of contemporary British songwriting, we are looking at ways to break them in the world's biggest music market."
If you actually look at what the British government's "range of new initiatives" amount to, it all adds up to making new research into the US market available to UK music companies. Sorry to piss on your parade here - but you can't seriously research a music market. What are you going to do? Have focus groups in Cleveland? Even if you looked at the most popular genres of music in the US, that doesn't mean that you can simply replicate that sound for a chunk of that dollar.
The other initiative on offer is a website highlighting the latest British music. Why would anyone go to a government-endorsed music site, particularly as they appear to be flogging their wares with all the style and sophistication of dog-food merchants?
The only other initiative here seems to be a broad programme of gigs showcasing UK musicians. Apart from the fact that you wince slightly at any government document containing the term gig, the term showcase is anathema to most gig-goers, given that the bands involved always exude a bored "we don't know what we're doing playing Idaho on a Tuesday night but our flights were paid" attitude. Oh, and there may well be a stall at this year's South by SouthWest music festival, decked out with a Union Jack and a poster that reads "Buy British".
This is New Labour at its most egregious. Although, you can see why they're using Private Blunt as the vanguard figure of their new campaign. The singer talks and sounds like a younger version of Tony Blair - back when Blair could pick out a few chords on the guitar and wasn't hearing voices in his head telling him to invade foreign countries.
It might have been more instructive to look back at the history of British number one singles in the US chart. Before Blunt it was The Spice Girls in 1997 with Wannabe - one of the few out-and-out pop songs in the then r'n'b-hip-hop-dominated US charts. The other three songs were I'm Too Sexy by the genius that was Right Said Fred. That was no surprise because the sales figures show that novelty songs always sell more in the US than in the UK (vide Weird Al Jankovic). The other two songs - Seal's Kiss From A Rose and UB40's Can't Help Falling In Love were both given a considerable leg-up by dint of being popular film soundtrack songs - from Batman Forever and Sliver respectively.
The big deal, though, with breaking the US is the lyrics. The Jam, The Smiths, Suede, Blur and Pulp all failed miserably, simply because the folks in Boise, Idaho had no idea what they were talking about and, even with a cultural dictionary to hand, couldn't decode their references. Tales from a Bermondsey council estate simply won't play in the mid-West.
The bands that have made it - Oasis and Coldplay - all deal in generic, non-specific lyrics about vaguely universal themes. Keep it "moon" and keep it "June". The Yankee dollar awaits.
bboyd@irish-times.ie
REVOLVER
Brian Boyd
