The BRITs have long had their fair share of American influence over the years. However, since its inception in 1977, no one could argue that British musicians weren’t dominating the charts while either defying or creating genre. At the height of punk, it seemed ironic, then, that the Album of the Year during its first broadcast would be Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released ten years prior. But at the same time, who better than The Beatles—still the most personifying entity of “British music”—to receive the award?
Poetically, the future of The Beatles’ UK chart record for having three albums at number one in the span of a year would be toppled by the very person to receive the Global Icon Award in 2021. And, for Taylor Swift, it only took 259 days as opposed to The Beatles’ 364. In short, with the hat trick of folklore, evermore, and Fearless (Taylor’s Version), even the British had to change tack and announce this year, “The Americans are coming!”
And yet, looking back on the award show’s history, there were consistent signs of this future (nostalgia). As the 1980s arrived, and American music shifted toward reverence for and emulation of the trifecta of pop icons—Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson—the BRITs still favored its own by awarding the likes of Soft Cell, Culture Club and Pet Shop Boys. Yet it was clear the ceremony had already started kowtowing to the influence of American music that the British had once held at the start of the British Invasion that began in the 1960s (a term that was “cute” at the time to people, but in the climate of the present smacks of just how much the British wear their colonial pride with a “wink and a nod”).
With Barbra Streisand and Michael Jackson both taking home the Album of the Year award in the 1980s, the kernels of a sea change were clearly starting to occur with regard to the British seeing themselves as preeminent in every way including musically. Granted, that self-perception of preeminence reached another new crescendo in the 90s with Britpop.
By the 1995 BRIT Awards, with Blur making a clean sweep in most of the categories (to Oasis’ chagrin), it was clear that the glimmer of American sway seen in the 80s was being quelled again. Even so, the presence of Madonna performing “Bedtime Story” at that same 1995 ceremony still indicated the BRITs couldn’t let go of—needed—their American “cousins” to stick around. If only in case British music somehow ended up going too far off the rails. And while, yes, the BRITs have consistently sectioned out “International” Artist award categories, they’ve, more often than not, been bequeathed to Americans above all other nationalities. In the absence of Adele and Arctic Monkeys of late, it seems this favoring of American musicians has experienced its most major spike yet.
This much was clear on the May 11th edition of the show, in which Americans like Olivia Rodrigo and her unwitting mentor, Taylor Swift, invaded the O2 in Greenwich with their own clout and influence. Swift, who appeared to accept the Global Icon Award (wherein she thanked her own British boo, Joe Alwyn), is only the second American musician to do so (after, for whatever reason, P!nk). For the BRITs to once again have to acknowledge that it is an American, not a Brit, who deserves such a weighty title is, in many respects, a mirror of the country’s own post-Brexit fall from grace.
Other signs of American sway included Haim (who Swift also thanked in reference to collaborating with her on evermore) receiving the Best International Group award (over, say, BTS—for true non-American influence) and Billie Eilish winning for Best International Female Solo Artist (a win that her British Vogue cover couldn’t have hurt).
As for “Miss Americana” herself being the queen of the event—apart from British-Albanian Dua Lipa, the ultimate darling of the night—the Swiftian infiltration speaks to something that’s never really happened before in the British music industry: there is no cock-swinging male Brit to “bow down to” anymore.
While it might still be an Anglican white girl at the helm of sonic power, a lot of people might see that as progress… “by British standards.” Though probably not the Tories, who would prefer the adulation to remain reserved for the erstwhile untouchable British (white) men of the music industry and beyond. Still, Swift was kind enough to write an ode to this precise sort with “London Boy” from 2019’s Lover. Perhaps another reason they felt obliged to at least surrender the power to an Anglophile.
