UK acts disappear from US charts: this is the kind of thing that gets the papers here terribly excited. Does it really mean anything? Not much – there’s been a gap between British and American public tastes for ages, and the stuff selling in America currently (hip-hop and alternative rock) is the sort of music Brits have generally found hard to sell back across the Atlantic.
But thinking idly about this it struck me again how lucky we are in Britain (unless you work in the record industry, oh well). The US-Europe cultural crossroads means that our charts get everything in the US charts bar crossover country, plus every huge-in-Europe disco hit, plus more UK-specific hits and trends (UK Garage, bootleg mixes), plus all the stuff that the rest of the world test-hypes here (The Strokes, Andrew WK, Electroclash). It’s no wonder the Top 40 moves so fast – it has to to keep up!