For a country once ruled by the iron fist of the old Empire, America has been very receptive to British musical invasions over the past 50 years.
In the 1960s, it was The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. In the '80s, the video age gave a platform to glamorous New Wave acts such as Duran Duran and fascinatingly androgynous figures like Boy George. And in the '90s, there was the unapologetic swagger of bands like Oasis.
But the current British pop invasion is led by a line of generic-looking, insipid-sounding acoustic singer-songwriters that need to be kept out of the US, for the simple reason that they might just bore us to death.
It all started with Ed Sheeran, whose nice-guy shtick has earned him many friends in the music world — most notably, Taylor Swift. She essentially lent him her fan base when she took him on tour in 2013, and Sheeran's wishy-washy, wallpaper pop has been on radio playlists ever since.
Now, he's followed by a second wave of snoozy troubadours. Currently touted as the next big thing is George Ezra.
This boyish 21-year-old peddles barely passable folk tunes, sung in a faux-blues rasp, on his debut album "Wanted on Voyage." Alas, you can find him on "Saturday Night Live" March 28.
Then there's James Bay, whose album "Chaos and the Calm" drops Tuesday. In the UK, he's already had a Top-10 hit with his track "Hold Back the River," but he, too, is a painfully banal singer-songwriter.
If you saw him on the subway platform at Union Square, the only thing that would make him stand out from all the other anonymous buskers would be his jaunty hat.
This invasion is pop culture's version of saltines: bland music made by artists with wafer-thin personalities. And yet, there's a grinding inevitability about their success — and Swift has a part in it.
Bay is set to open for her on the first leg of her "1989" world tour, while Ezra has been courting Swift's attention by tweeting at her and saying he was looking to hook up with her at last month's Brit Awards.
The rush to be touched by the hand of Taylor is embarrassingly obvious.
The real shame is that the cream of Britain's crop is falling through the cracks in favor of this mass-market mulch. London band Savages are currently preparing their second album and sound like a firestorm of angular guitar-rock.
Fat White Family are another collection of rock 'n' roll desperados who play with such debauched ferocity that you worry their art will be the death of them.
And if catchy, radio-friendly pop is more your speed, look no further than La Roux — their album "Trouble in Paradise" was the best of 2014.
The good news? This middle-of-the-road trend can't last long, if only because none of them ever do. Until it's over, though, this British invasion is more like the British imposition.
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