Beat music

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Beat Music, also known as Mersey Beat and British Invasion, is a pop music genre that evolved in the UK in the early 1960s. Beat groups characteristically had simple guitar-dominated line-ups, with vocal harmonies and catchy tunes. Beat music has little to do with the Beat generation literary movement of the 1950s, and more to do with driving rhythms, which the bands had adopted from their R&B/Soul music influences.

A 'British Invasion' of acts led by The Beatles swept across the Atlantic Ocean and stormed the charts in North America, but many acts didn't progress into the later Psychedelic era or 'rock' decade of the 1970s.

[edit] Notable acts

• The Beatles
• The Dave Clark Five
• Gerry & The Pacemakers
• Herman's Hermits
• Them
• The Hollies
• The Searchers
• The Zombies