Nicky Wire of Manic Street Preachers. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
Despite being American, I have an innate preference for British pop, something that asserted itself as soon as I was old enough to listen to music critically. I say "listen", but to me the way Brit artists looked - which was, almost invariably, better than their US counterparts - and what they said was as important as their sound. I was, and still am, knocked out by the effort they made in presenting themselves, and the way stance and attitude were considered vital, whether they could play or not. See the early Manics for an example of a band who knew what they stood for long before they acquired any musical skill to back it up - would being guitar virtuosos have made them any better? No way - but an American group with their sketchy playing skills would never have been nurtured through three albums, as they were before they finally hit pay dirt with Everything Must Go.
Americans, meanwhile, tend not to put much thought into presentation - there will always be the odd theatrical type, like Alice Cooper, Kiss and the Scissor Sisters, but few rock acts offer what I consider to be the holy trinity of music, an identifiable look and a point of view. For every Nirvana - who looked and sounded unique (remember Cobain arriving onstage at Reading in 1992 in a wheelchair?), and stood for something (the right to reject success - how un-American can you get?) - there have always been hundreds of (I'm looking at this week's album chart) Nickelbacks and Jack Johnsons. They do what they do and, uh, that's about it.
I've got an article to this effect in today's G2, but I'm curious to know whether my slavish appreciation of UK pop is shared by other Americans who read the Guardian music blog, and whether there are Brits who have an equally fervent love of American music and can't stand the homegrown stuff.
