Let’s take a look at the international spread of pop music in the 1960s. It goes without saying that the English-speaking pop music industry extended its reach around the globe during that decade, from the US and then the UK. Groups like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys, and singers like Petula Clark, Elvis Presley, and Stevie Wonder became household names in places like Italy, The Philippines, South Africa, Brazil, and Thailand. Their songs were covered in native languages, and their images were framed in bedrooms and schools around the world.
But what about the reverse? Were English-speaking countries ready to listen to pop music from other cultures? In other languages? Could a German rock star become world-famous? Or a Japanese pop group? Was there any mechanism for “international” pop stars to breach the American and UK markets?
We can examine the evidence, in the form of our international hit singles charts from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. We can look for performers who were based in countries other than the above; although some international performers ended up recording, performing, and living part-time in the US or UK, we draw no distinction here between those and others who “stayed at home” and let their music do the travelling. For the sake of argument, this list of “international” musicians will not include performers from Ireland (e.g. The Bachelors, Them / Van Morrison) on the premise that they wrote, sang, and performed in English and for all intents and purposes were part of the UK pop scene. Conversely, we do include French-language records made in Quebec that crossed over into the English Canadian charts.