perceptions across the atlantic

Sting sucks, and what was with that cameo of his wife (if that was actually her?) on Friends (which I, uh, don't usually watch. Really.)!? As if The Pretentious One is so fucking famous that his wife appearing on the program is justified by proxy?
I think these cross-Atlantic dynamics of acceptance/rejection have a big hand in the way that music is interpreted and on swaying the general consensus. This is esp. true here (um, meaning ILM) where there's many of us from both the US and the UK (and I do think that those are the two areas between which this exchange and interplay of opinion are the most important, for our purposes, for exactly that reason). In fact, and those of you that have been around forever please feel free to correct me on this, but it seems to me that the general pop-friendliness -or at least the appearance of such- of the FT/ILX nexus is at least partially a result of these differences of perception; in that because we're more likely to accept the pop music of another country than our own because we're constantly bombarded with our own pop music, and we're more familiar with the (possibly negative) social connections that pop may have in the cultural context of our own country. Or is this a very stupid US- centric assumption to make - are you over there in the UK just as inundated with our pop as we are (or is that a very stupid US- centric thought itself?)?

I had the same question: is it really true that US pop is an undercurrent in the UK/EU, or does the massive cultural export of the US overwhelm listeners over there too??

guess this might take a while to get the appropriate opinions, as by my calc it's 4am GMT right now. I'll check back tomorrow.

I put up a thread a couple of weeks ago about Sting, wondering what possesses him to come out with some of the rubbish he does. [Fraid I haven't yet worked out how to put a link onto a posting]

Hmm, well I can answer the pop-friendliness thing, sort of - yes US pop is huge here but because of the way our charts work (sales only, no airplay considerations), the shelf-life of all but the hugest hits is shorter so the average US pop single - say, Blu Cantrell - isn't around on radio long enough for us to get bored of. But the big names - Britney, Destiny's Child, etc. - are just as hyper-exposed here, they just have to share airtime with Westlife and Blue.

When we started writing about pop a lot the US stuff was so much better than anything the rest of the world was producing that it probably looked like we were transatlantic cultural groupies - but recently things have shifted a bit, it was interesting that the Top 5 in this latest Focus Group were all non-US singles, though the voting panel was just as transatlantic as ever.

those of us in the third world have huge problems with questions like this - mind you, I think Sting sucks is a universal thing.

I did not intend to offend anyone in other parts of the world, it's just that I'm looking for insight into how I see sting's music, and I'm from the US, he's from UK. That's all. See last sentence of orig. question.

I would say Sting is hated with much more virulence in the UK than in the US.

Im not so sure about Americans being so accepting to artists from the Uk. I think there is a certain demographic of people who are extremly homophobic and consider bands/movies/actors and such from overseas "GAY" therefore these people label them as shite.. Of course these "homophobes" tend to be from the Kid Rock, Shit Bizkit, Korn, Lynyrd Skinnard crowd. Not saying that Sting is any good and nor am I a homo phobe, I just liked him better with the Police. and i came to realize that I only liked the Police for Stewart Copeland anyways.