Do you know Gary Barlow? If you live in the US, there are a lot of chances you have never heard of him but you certainly know him if you are British: Over there, he has had 3 No.1 singles and 2 No. 1 albums as a solo artist, 16 top 5 hits, 11 No. 1 singles and 7 No.1 albums with his successful band Take That! He is about to be awarded an Order of the British Empire (an order of chivalry) this summer and is the head judge on the X Factor on British TV. Recently, he was even voted by Onepoll.com as the greatest British songwriter of all time, ahead of Paul McCartney and John Lennon! Total craziness!
And I had never heard of him. Why do some artists manage to cross over and soon are known everywhere in the world, whereas others are always limited to their own country? Barlow is not the only example of course, and by far, not everyone can cross over like the Beatles did it in the 60s. Robbie Williams, also from the band Take That, attempted a career here in the US but never really made it.
So what is the magic formula, if there is one? Right now the boyband One Direction have become the first British band to top the US charts with their debut album, and they are a rare phenomenon… They are young, they target a very young female audience, but still those American teenager girls had already Bieber, why did they need five little boys from over the pond? One Direction may well be riding the Bieber effect, and that’s why they are successful at the moment, as you are never too young, too cute, too white, too emo-haircut,… but then why didn’t Take That make it here at the time?
Coldplay? Adele? They definitively made it! But if you look at all these UK bands during the past decades, Boyzone, Westlife, and Five, interestingly never really made it here in the 90s because, at the time, we were busy with our own boybands, ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys.
Recently, there was a void and a new haircut, which made One Direction’s American success possible. It’s the same story for anything else, natural selection is pretty harsh for bands, and the competition is ferocious. They have to come at the right time, with the right song and the right outfit to find their US niche, and it is always luck, because who can predict all these things? Take That has missed the boat, it’s way too late for Barlow now, but what does this mean about real talent? Probably nothing, since who will remember about One Direction in a few years?