[3] British pop and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Bee Gees, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Who, the Kinks,[4] the Zombies, Small Faces, the Dave Clark Five,[5] the Spencer Davis Group, the Yardbirds, Them, Manfred Mann,[6] the Searchers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Hollies, Herman's Hermits, Peter and Gordon, the Animals, the Moody Blues, Cream, Traffic, Pink Floyd, and Procol Harum, as well as solo singers such as Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Tom Jones, Donovan, and Marianne Faithfull were at the forefront of the "invasion.

"[7] The rebellious tone and image of American rock and roll and blues musicians became popular with British youth in the late 1950s.

While early commercial attempts to replicate American rock and roll mostly failed, the trad jazz–inspired skiffle craze,[8] with its do-it-yourself attitude, produced two top-ten hits in the US by Lonnie Donegan.

[19] The Beatles' 4 November Royal Variety Performance in front of the Queen Mother sparked music industry and media interest in the group.

[19] During November, a number of major American print outlets and two network television evening programs published and broadcast stories on the phenomenon that became known as "Beatlemania".

[19][21] After seeing the report, 15-year-old Marsha Albert of Silver Spring, Maryland, wrote a letter the following day to disc jockey Carroll James at radio station WWDC asking, "Why can't we have music like that here in America?

[21] On 29 December, The Baltimore Sun, reflecting the dismissive view of most adults, editorialised, "America had better take thought as to how it will deal with the invasion.

[22] On 3 January 1964, The Jack Paar Program ran Beatles concert footage licensed from the BBC "as a joke", but it was watched by 30 million viewers.

[23] On 7 February 1964, the CBS Evening News ran a story about the Beatles' US arrival that afternoon, of which Walter Cronkite said, "The British Invasion this time goes by the code name Beatlemania.

[34] The group's massive chart success, which included at least two of their singles holding the top spot on the Hot 100 during each of the seven consecutive years starting with 1964, continued until they broke up in 1970.

These were usually composed of groups playing in a more pop style, such as the Hollies or the Zombies, as well as artists with a harder-driving, blues-based approach like the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, and the Rolling Stones.

[59] On 1 May, the British Commonwealth also nearly swept the Cash Box singles chart's Top Ten, lacking only a hit at number six instead of "Count Me In".

Julie [Andrews] became a movie queen by falling very smartly into step with the recent vogue in America for almost anything labeled British.

My Fair Lady, released on 25 December 1964, starring British actress Audrey Hepburn as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, won eight Academy Awards.

[64] "Mod" fashions, such as the miniskirt from "Swinging London" designers such as Mary Quant, and worn by early supermodels Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and other models, were popular worldwide.

[80][81][82][83][84] Newspaper columnist John Crosby wrote, "The English girl has an enthusiasm that American men find utterly captivating.

[55] In America, the Invasion arguably spelled the end of the popularity of instrumental surf music,[89] pre-Motown vocal girl groups, the folk revival (which adapted by evolving into folk rock), teenage tragedy songs, Nashville country music (which also faced its own crisis with the deaths of some of its biggest stars at the same time), and temporarily, the teen idols that had dominated the United States charts in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

[92] It prompted many existing garage rock bands to adopt a sound with a British Invasion inflection and inspired many other groups to form, creating a scene from which many major US acts of the next decade would emerge.

In his analysis, he noted that several of the acts whose careers were eclipsed by the Invasion—among them Bobby Vee, Neil Sedaka, Dion and Elvis Presley—eventually made comebacks after the Invasion waned.

[97] Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, for example, acknowledged the debt that US artists owed to British musicians, such as the Searchers, but that "they were using folk music licks that I was using anyway.

[102] Englishman Geoff Stephens (or John Carter) reciprocated the gesture a la Rudy Vallée a year later in the New Vaudeville Band's "Winchester Cathedral".

[105][106] Anticipating the Bay City Rollers by more than a decade, two British acts that reached the Hot 100's top twenty gave a tip of the hat to America: Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas and the Nashville Teens.

[112][113] According to Robert J. Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, the British invasion pushed the counterculture into the mainstream.

The wave of Anglophilia largely faded as US culture shifted in response to the Vietnam War and the resulting civil unrest in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Along with the music, new wave power impacted fashion, such as the mod style of the Jam or the skinny ties of the burgeoning Los Angeles scene.

Although the Knack and power pop fell out of mainstream popularity, the genre continues to have a cult following with occasional periods of modest success.

Another wave of British mainstream prominence in US music charts came in the mid-1990s with the brief success of Spice Girls, Oasis, Blur, Radiohead and Robbie Williams.

At least one British act would appear somewhere on the Hot 100 every week from 2 November 1963 until 20 April 2002, originating with the debut of the Caravelles' "You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry".