A Five Star Flop: The Collision of Music Industry Machinations, Genre Maintenance, and Black Britishness in 1980s Pop

In a 1987 interview with BBC Radio 1 DJ, Mike Read, members of the British pop group Five Star collectively stated that their hopes and wishes for 1988 were “to crack America” – that is, to achieve comparable success in the US music market to what they had in the UK. Formed in 1983, the five-sibling group had a string of highly successful UK releases between 1985 and 1987, including six Top 10 hits. In 1987, they received a prestigious Brit Award for Best British Group, largely based on the success of their second album, Silk and Steel. Yet following the release of Five Star’s fourth album, Rock the World, in August 1988, the group’s highest-ranking song would reach a paltry Number 49 on the UK Singles Chart. This article centers, Rock the World, as the key hinge in Five Star’s dramatic decline. The group never cracked the US market – their highest Billboard Hot 100 song being the 1986 single, “Can’t Wait Another Minute ” (peaking at Number 41) – and remain virtually unknown to most American music fans. By combining a production of culture approach to organizational sociology, a musicological examination of the history and boundary maintenance of key genres, and a critical assessment of how the group’s Black Britishness was presented and received, I argue that Five Star’s short-lived visibility in the UK and invisibility in the US had little to do with the quality of their music and can be attributed to industry politics and the transnational impacts of prevailing notions of race, genre, and authenticity on popular music reception. A Five Star Flop: The Collision of Music Industry Machinations, Genre Mainten... Transposition, 10 | 2022 20

performance on the British television program Pebble Mill at One brought the group to the attention of several UK record labels including RCA. Thus began a series of releases with the major label including their break through single "All Fall Down," which peaked at Number 15 on the UK charts in June 1985. In a 1987 interview, lead singer Deniece mentioned that even before they had this first big hit, they used to sit in Doris's room and "talk about going to America and being famous." 11 6 Following "All Fall Down" and up until the release of "Rock My World" in July 1988, all but one of the Five Star singles released in the UK reached the Top 25, including five Top 10 songs on their second album, Silk & Steel, which was certified quadruple platinum and spent 58 weeks on the album charts. Following "Rock My World," only one song would break the Top 50. Although a music act's decline is often as much a gradual oncoming inevitability as a dramatic drop, and this could certainly be argued about Five Star, I nevertheless position the Rock The World album as the group's definitive flop. 7 Five Star is generally described as a "pop" group with an orientation towards R&B. It seems clear enough that the group's aspirations -affirmed by their almost immediate success -were to be considered in the same vein as transcendent Black American artists of the time like Michael and Janet Jackson, and Whitney Houston. The comparisons with the Jackson 5 were inevitable. During their career, the group would work with some of the same studio musicians and songwriters as the King of Pop. Janet Jackson, in turn, openly admired Five Star telling British television host Muriel Gray, "I think they're great singers and I really love their work." 12 Five Star's 1986 hit song, "If I Say Yes," had originally been written for Whitney Houston. After Clive Davis passed on the song, songwriter Michael Jay shared it with the group and it wound up being the second hit song co-written by Jay on Silk & Steel. 13 As with Michael Jackson, who prior to his smash album Thriller struggled with being pigeonholed as a Black R&B/dance artist, 14 Buster Pearson explained, "I don't want Five Star to make records for black kids only -and I don't want them to make records for white kids only. It's for everybody." 15 This tension between desiring to be transcendentally popular (or "pop") and engaging with an industry that seeks to categorize artists to facilitate their legibility to particular music consuming markets, I argue, limited Five Star's ability to cross-over the Atlantic and establish their popularity in the US.

Music Categories and Music Industry Machinations 8
To varying degrees, categories of music tend to be connected with categories of people. Yet this connection is not as straightforward as casual listeners sometimes assume. For example, the broad classification of music as "Black" (i.e. Black music), might be defined as music performed by Black people or, alternately, music consumed by Black people. It might be music that develops and matures within Black communities or music that possesses certain sonic signifiers that have been associated with any of the aforementioned understandings. These are just a few of the possible ways to think about this. 16 Whilst these different definitions are not exclusive -indeed where they overlap we may find Black music's most secure demarcation -they each contain spaces of contention if not objection. Black musicians perform many kinds of music that most people do not commonly identify as Black, including Black classical musicians and Black rock musicians, the latter performing a tradition that has its origins within Black communities but that for many people no longer calls to mind Blackness. 17 Many styles of music commonly thought of as Black have large White followings including blues, jazz, R&B, reggae, and rap. As with rock music, within certain contexts some of these genres may no longer even be thought of as Black (blues and jazz especially). Finally, despite the presence of musical markers -such things as complex polyrhythms, calland-response, blue-note bending, and melismatic singing 18 -there are instances where music performances just do not feel authentically Black. As Richard A. Peterson noted, "authenticity is a claim that is made by or for someone, thing, or performance and either accepted or rejected by relevant others." 19

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Of course, the association between a style of music and a group of people is more meaningful for some genres than for other -R&B and country being two of the more prominent examples. Indeed, genres that invest the most in notions of authenticity connected to particular groups and/or lifestyles are typically on the periphery of the popular music market. 20 As Jennifer C. Lena explains, "songs intended for the pop music market typically have their distinguishing genre characteristics purposely obscured or muted in the interest of gaining wider appeal." 21 The "pop" genre, while at times described in terms of sonic markers, is in fact a dynamic and malleable category that's designation is primarily based on what is selling the most, what is playing the most, and what is therefore most popular. 22 For this reason, Anne Danielsen, in writing about musical crossovers, prefers the category of mainstream music, highlighting distinct threads of rock and pop/dance aesthetic influence. 23 10 While the rock aesthetic dominated popular music from the 1950s through the 1970s, by the 1980s a transcendent wave of dance-oriented mainstream music, featuring both Black and White artists, was emerging. 24 Thus, Five Star's placement at the cusp of pop and R&B mirrored the aforementioned Black artists they aspired to emulate (i.e. the Jacksons and Whitney Houston). Yet even as some Black artists and musical styles break into the mainstream -indeed Five Star certainly succeeded in doing this in the UK market -the relationship between Black and mainstream music remains fraught.
11 In considering this tenuous standing, particularly as it applies to Five Star's pursuit of American popularity, it is useful to adopt a broad perspective on how the music industry endeavors to position its commodities -artists, albums, and songs -towards the goal of achieving optimum success. The production of culture approach, examines the structural arrangements through which symbolic elements of culture, such as popular music, are created, manufactured, marketed, distributed, and consumed. 25 In doing this, the approach focuses on the interactions of six productive facets: technologies, laws and regulation, industry structure, organizational structure, occupational career, and market. My discussion of Five Star's pursuit of market popularity, and their ambitions to make it big in America, specifically highlights the structure of the music industry they engaged with and the organizational arrangements they observed in crafting their product -including their music and how it was exhibited through single releases, music videos, concerts, and their celebrity image.
12 Five Star's position as an R&B act raises important questions about the connection between race and music. Having one foot in the R&B world was clearly part of the group's self-fashioning. However, the American market's insistence on containing them within raced music genres -as evidenced by their early placement on Billboard's Black and Hot Dance/Disco charts and lack of comparable success on its Hot 100 Chartconfounded their goal to mirror their musical heroes. Despite being one of the genres most linked to a category of people, R&B, in its most credible exhibition, insists on a range of authenticity-work beyond racial ascription alone. 26 In my discussion of these performative credentials, I toggle between R&B, as a pervasive yet historically unsettled Black music genre, and one of its prominent counterparts: soul. 13 R&B's unsettled standing as a raced musical genre can be gleaned through its fluctuating appearance (and disappearance) in Billboard's chart history. The Billboard R&B charts officially began in 1949, replacing "Race Records," as an effort to capture an array of post-war tastes in Black dance music that were notably distinct from more religious oriented gospel traditions. 27  First, the American market was incredibly segmented compared to in the UK, where the promotional power of BBC Radio 1 and television programs like Top of the Pops, "allows all kinds of music to receive exposure." 33 Second, Robinson observed that success in the British market required releasing several singles in rapid succession -typically before an album was delivered. Because the British charts were determined almost entirely by sales (as opposed to airplay), they moved faster and were less consistent than their American equivalents. Accordingly, UK labels had to maintain artists' momentum by putting out new songs "with a frequency that the rest of the world finds impossible to keep up with." 34 In the US market, by contrast, more time could be dedicated to building an artist's or album's foundation for sustained radio play, which would result in more consistent attention and sales through an enduring position on the charts. This means that British labels needed to be selective about which of their many singlesoften coming out before the album itself -were released in the US. Indeed, one great pastime that I have observed among contemporary Five Star fans -often found in comments on YouTube videos -is to remark on which UK singles they think would have done well if released in the US. There are indications that during the mid-1980s, RCA Records was organized in a way that made it additionally cumbersome and costly for its UK division to issue US releases. While I cannot confirm this, Robinson's observations imply that releasing a song in America was understood to involve a bigger investment. 16 Even before Buster Pearson had the idea to start a music group with his five children, he was in the process of starting a new, "soul" record label. 35 Although a handful of other artists released music on Tent Records, it developed into a label primarily dedicated to housing Five Star releases. When RCA showed interest in the group, Buster, who had experience both running his own label and witnessing the darker side of the industry, secured a licensing agreement with the major label while retaining Five Star's independent affiliation with Tent. Under this family-run label, which went on to become "one of the most successful independent companies in the country," the Pearsons controlled the music they recorded and released as well as the collaborators they worked with. 36 Cracks in the Royal Armour 17 As the father, manager, and occasional producer of the "First Family of British Pop", Buster Pearson looms large in Five Star's career trajectory. 37 When they visited America to promote their first album, Buster is reported to have turned down an offer from Disney to produce a Five Star television show because he did not feel the group was established enough yet. 38 The group also declined an invitation from George Michael to be the opening act for Wham!'s farewell concert in 1986. 39 Buster made the decision not to incur the costs of travelling to Los Angeles to record the vocals for their third album, Between The Lines. 40 At least one of the major producers of the album raised questions about this decision by complaining about the constant barrage of fans they had to deal with outside of UK studios, owing to the previous album's success. 41 Buster appears to have been the primary decider of which songs to release (and what to include as bside). He made the decision to cut ties with Nick Martinelli -the American R&B producer who produced the two songs on Luxury Of Life that had the most success in America (i.e. "All Fall Down" and "Let Me Be The One") -after Martinelli made his youngest daughter Deniece cry during a recording session. 42 Whereas in the public record Buster Pearson is consistently regarded by producers, songwriters, and record label executives as a great person and someone who was easy to work with, there were clearly moments, most notably around the release and reception of Rock The World, where his creative control did not seem to be in harmony with the shrewd and calculating business interests of RCA. As music sales waned and Five Star became less of a moneymaker for RCA, it seems possible that the hassle of an independent label and controlling father made the group less of a priority for the larger company. 18 Through the mid-1980s, RCA had been a music label in fluctuation. Having signed major artists like Diana Ross to what was at the time the most lucrative record deal in history, the label found itself heavily in debt during its years of affiliation with Five Star. In  19 Nineteen eight-eight was also the year when Peter Robinson, the man who had signed Five Star to RCA, left the label. Following Robinson's departure, "the group's management" (i.e. Buster) is said to have grown "increasingly dissatisfied" with the relationship with the major label. 44 Popular music sociologists John Ryan and Michael Hughes discuss the music industry's decision chain -including choices about songwriting, publishing, recording, releasing, marketing, and distributing -and the important role that music producers play in steering these processes. 45 Five Star worked with several different producers on each of their first two albums. For their third and fourth albums, the group worked with fewer producers (and songwriters) as group members became more involved in aspects of the decision chain. The one constant through the first three albums was the executive producer duo of Peter Robinson and Buster Pearson. Dennis Lambert and Richard James Burgess, the two outside producers brought in to work on the group's disappointing third album, Between The Lines, both express, with what sounds like a touch of regret, that by the time they came on board all the songs for the album had already been chosen by Robinson and Buster. 46 20 As the abovementioned situation with Nick Martinelli illustrates, Buster had the strain of balancing his role as a manager/executive-producer with his role as a fatherunderstandably, protecting his family came first. Early on in their careers, Buster had realized that "the clubs were no place for his children." 47 Speaking about these early touring experiences, middle-daughter Lorraine remarked, "It's really good that [Buster's] around because I just don't feel secure without him." 48 The father sought to safeguarding his children from both the external evils of an exploitive music industry and the internal tensions that were potential by-products of success. 21 Five Star fashioned itself as a team with each member having a distinct contribution. Oldest sibling Stedman, who had briefly studied fashion in college, designed their clothes; next in line, Doris, choreographed their dance routines; Lorraine, who published a novel in 1989, was often positioned as the group's spokesperson; youngest daughter, Deniece, did most of the lead vocals (although three of the other four took their turns); and youngest, Delroy, was an aspiring producer. Yet Buster intentionally sought to reduce competition among the siblings. In selecting the b-sides for their early releases, he at once claimed to have made the decisions based on "merit" and to have selected songs highlighting each child "on purpose." 49 In this same spirit, of the ten songs preselected for Between The Lines, four were written and eventually produced by Pearson children. music in the late 1980s. Jason Toynbee is one of several scholars who marks the 1980s as the start of a "third moment" in popular music -following the Tin Pan Alley era and rock's dominance of the 1950s through the 1970s. The mainstream of this third moment is more globally focused, foregrounding African diasporic styles like reggae and rap. 50 Consistent with this, and foretelling of rap's 1990s dominance of the Black American music imagination, Loren Kajikawa considers 1988 (the year Rock The World was released) "rap music's greatest year." 51 In addition to these organizational changes and shifts in the character of pop music, as the Pearson children became increasingly involved in songwriting and producing -a pattern that continued with Rock The Worldit is worth contemplating how family/group dynamics impacted their pursuit of success. 27 All of these promotional materials, including the "Another Weekend" video, showcased the group's new image. In an apparent effort to update their youthful "squeaky clean" reputation and appeal to a broader audience, Five Star embarked on what some fans refer to as their "Bad phase" -referencing the stark similarities with the black-leather aesthetic featured on the cover of Michael Jackson's album from the previous year. 66 The appearance of Deniece, who wore a bountiful blonde wig reminiscent of Dolly Parton, was easily the most dramatic of the five. Whereas for some fans this new look might have matched the edgier rock-inspired sounds of "Another Weekend," "Rock My World," and a later single called "Brand New World," its inconsistency with their prior image of polished refinement open the group up to more criticism than praise. 67 28 Both the "Rock My World" video and album cover photoshoot took place in a rock quarry, and featured group members wearing black leather and studs -these images were also used on the covers of two single releases. The proliferation of photos from this one shoot, combined with the drastic image makeover that they represented, gave Five Star's new Bad-look the effect of being ubiquitous. Yet one of the major television promotions that accompanied Rock The World's release featured the group in their recently purchased Sunningdale residence, Stone Court -described as a "luxurious 50room mansion," originally built as a residence for the Queen's mother. 68 A week prior to the album's release, Five Star appeared on the BBC Saturday morning television program UP2U making breakfast, with their hair and make-up completely done. In the feature, they also showed off their in-house recording studio and their fleet of expensive cars -including a Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Lamborghini, and twenty-five-foot metallic blue Mercedes stretch limousine. 69 Buster had insisted that they all purchase expensive cars, even before Delroy has his driver's license, because he believed that if they were going to be big stars they needed to look the part. This included moving into a luxurious home that matched the neo-Byzantine aesthetic, which the group had cultivated with the release of their debut album. 70 In hindsight, the disjuncture between Stone Court as a spectacularly glamourous residence and the raw leather look that Five Star sought to establish with Rock The World likely fueled perceptions that the group's new image amounted to little more than a tastelessly marketed scheme. Rather than re-enchanting their fans, Five Star's apparent emulation of Michael Jackson was generally received as tactless and trite. 71 29 Popular music success depends in large part on the quality of the relationship between performers and consumers -especially in the fast-paced world of British popular success where Five Star was situated. An important dimension of authenticity in popular music insists that artists remain "true to the authentic self" they present themselves as. 72 The mixed message created by Rock The World's "new image," did more to erode than create trust among the media and Five Star's fans. Perhaps just as costly, as the group's music failed to achieve past success, their ostentatious luxury made them easy targets for sensationalized news stories. 30 In 1987, writer Alan Wayne had credited Five Star with "steering well clear of the kind of publicity which normally dogs the rich and famous." 73 While it may be inevitable that at some point, especially as artists' celebrity begins to falter, the media will turn on them, starting in 1988 Five Star provided the tabloids with plenty of material. In the media, Stone Court was consistently presented with a curious combination of starstruck fascination and cynicism at the sheer indulgences of these young Black teenagers/twentysomethings. Stories abound about such things as their extravagantly expensive cars, Lorraine's five-day engagement to actor Eddie Murphy -where the latter accused the Pearson daughter of misleading him as a publicity stunt -the cost of their in-home recording studio, and the family's alleged bankruptcy. 74 Such negative press continued in the years following Rock The World. In fact, when the group began working on their subsequent project, RCA/BMG considered renaming them "Vector" in an effort to distance them from their tainted name. 75 Following the bank's repossession of Stone Court, this sustained negative press contributed to the group's decision to relocate to Los Angeles in the early 1990s. 76 The Reception of Black Britishness 31 From school-girls' dreams of making it big in the States to the reported five promotional/recording trips they had made across the pond by Christmas 1986, Five Star's pursuit of the US market had been longstanding. 77 Notably, the group's weeklong promotional visit to Los Angles in September 1987 has been implicated in their third album's disappointing reception in the UK. Traveling to America limited Five Star's ability to promote the first single from Between The Lines at home -thus, "Whenever You're Ready" stalled just outside the UK Top 10 (reaching Number 11). 78 As Peter Robinson explained (see above), promotional appearances on television and other media increased album sales, which in the British market directly impacted chart placement. 79 33 Black music in Britain was historically seen as something that came from abroad -with the first generation of Black migrants from the Caribbean and West Africa celebrating the music from their homelands. 80 By the 1970s, a second generation of children of Caribbean/African heritage, who also recognized their steadfast Britishness, began developing hybrid music styles and youth cultures of their own. 81 Despite the popularity of Caribbean music, most notably roots reggae, many of the visuals surrounding Black (musical) cool -such as fashion and hairstyles -came from the US. Simply put, Jamaican record labels did not have the resources to compete with America in crafting album packaging and other visual promotions. 82 Thus, these Black British youth of the 1970s created their own homegrown music forms -such as lovers' rock, Brit funk, and later the underground sound-system DJ scene -building on Caribbean and American musical-visual influences. Much of this music was characterized by a low frequency bass materialism that Paul Gilroy conceptualizes as a diasporic force. 83 By the late 1980s, when Five Star was making their renewed bid for American musical acceptance, the most prominent sounds of Black British pop in America were the bass heavy diasporic inflections of groups like Soul II Soul and Loose Ends. 84 34 Five Star's first released song, 1983's "Problematic," conveyed some of this Caribbean vibe. Yet with the single's lack of commercial success, the group abandoned this style. "Problematic" remains an outlier in Five Star's career -something seldom commented on even by their most ardent fans. The song's pulsing rhythm, bubble gum keys, and accented vocals call to mind their British reggae contemporaries, Musical Youth. Yet despite Buster Pearson's background in roots reggae, this was not his children's musical heritage. In interviews, Five Star members mention growing up listening to Nat King Cole, Connie Francis, Elvis Presley, Sam Cook, and Motown acts among others. According to Lloyd Bradley, the second generation of Black British youth which Five Star were a part of resisted the sounds of sufferation connected with roots reggae, gravitating instead towards music conveying "middle-class aspirations, happy, sophisticated music [that celebrated] dressing up and having a good time [and] didn't display a great deal of obvious disadvantage." 85 Indeed, this gravitation toward the good life seems pronounced with the Pearson children. Yet rather than being immersed in the generative spaces of musical creativity for this generation -the streets, the clubs, and even the youth clubs -as a family music group managed by their father, Five Star was internally focused. "Where British children are influenced by their friends, we are influenced by our parents," Doris once remarked. 86 Thus despite growing up in the working-class community of Romford, Five Star appears to have had a sheltered upbringing and musical career. Where the Five Star story and sound draws comparisons to 1980s American groups like the abovementioned New Edition as well as family groups like The Jets and DeBarge, each of these US group's rise to fame included difficult back stories featuring financial hardships, dodgy characters, and, eventually, being chewed-up and spit out by an exploitive industry. Although Five Star's moment in the sun did not end well, for a time Buster Pearson largely succeeded in protecting his children from many of the "bad things about the music industry." 87 36 During their promotional visits to the US -for example, in 1985 when Five Star appeared on American Band Stand -their English accents were celebrated as a novelty but at the same time placed them, both geographically and socially, outside the key sites of R&B/Soul resonance. R&B emerged in the mid-1940s and was crystalized as a Billboard music chart by the end of the decade around a constellation of urban music styles performed by recent Black migrants from the American South. As such, it has recognized roots in Southern blues, boogie-woogie, and to some degree gospel and jazz. The geographic core of R&B heritage, then, is the US South with its full maturation realized in Midwestern and Northeast cities. 88 Yet R&B was simultaneously integration music, which provided a soundtrack to collective movement during the Civil Rights era. By the early 1960s, the genre had become an "incoherent" category in large part owing to the extensive crossover of R&B songs into the pop category and the number of middle-of-the-road songs appearing on the Billboard R&B charts. 89 As the decade continued, a British Invasion of White artists, steeped in blues and R&B sounds would send the music category into disarray. 37 Soul, as a musical reference, was popularized during the late 1960s as a more direct index to Blackness and serious engagement with racial politics. Notably, soul was talked about as a performance practice and a quality that a music performance could include rather than as a category unto itself -you didn't perform soul, you had soul. DJ Nathaniel Magnificent Montague described it as, "the last to be hired, first to be fired, brown all year-round, sit-in-the-back-of-the-bus feeling," explaining that you have to live with Black people "or you don't have it." 90 Taking a jab at British invaders, Montague went on to characterize soul as "one thing our English friends can't imitate." 91 Emily Lordi concurs that soul involves a "habit of thinking, a logic." 92 Citing Geneva Smitherman, Lordi explains that it is "derived from struggle, suffering, and having participated in the Black Experience." 93 Soul is thus "a logic of resilience… that turns debilitation into advantage" as well as a stylized "will to proceed" enacted through a range of musical practices. 94 38 Although technically Five Star's US aspirations did not involved "cracking" Billboard's "Soul" music chart -in 1982 the "Soul" chart was renamed "Black Music" in an effort to account for "the diverse nature of music which the field now encompasses" 95 -their credibility as artists was determined through what I consider an American R&B/Soul/ Black music matrix. In the US music marketplace, the group lacked the requisite credentials and departed in important ways from the soul logic that was key to their favorable reception. 96 Their Britishness failed to communicate resilience and if anything, when paired with their sheltered and mostly luxurious image, noted privilege. After signing with Epic later that year, the group went on to release two additional albums. 99 Notably, the first of these (a self-titled album) was entirely written and coproduced by Pearsons and, curiously, the first two singles featured Doris as the lead singer. Yet neither of these albums did anything commercially. There was no US chart placement whatsoever and their highest British placement was Number 53. Five Star also released two largely unrecognized independent albums in 1994 and 2001 -today physical copies of both albums are quite rare. 42 In the twenty-first century, as group members moved on with their lives, Five Star periodically got together to perform at various 1980s music nostalgia festivals in the UK. Of the siblings, Delroy and Deniece (now spelling her name Denise) have remained the most musically active. The former lives in California and continues to work as a music producer -his most noteworthy success coming with the 1990s R&B group Immature. The latter released an independent album, Imprint, in 2014. In addition, Denise Pearson has appeared on BBC's The Voice and starred as Michael Jackson in the West End version of Thriller -Live. Buster Pearson passed away in 2012. 43 At some point, Denise started performing solo as Five Star using four backup dancers/ singers. One can reason that this was in an effort to continue her performing career in the 1980s nostalgia market without having to rely on the availability and whims of her siblings. Her older sister, Lorraine, is reported to have been "disappointed and shocked" when she learned about the replacements while doing a random online search for old photos of the group. "Denise is my sister and I love her," Lorraine said, "but I don't like her very much." 100 In summer 2020, around the same time that Denise released a benefit record ("You Raise Me Up") in support of UK National Health Service Hot 100 song being the 1986 single, "Can't Wait Another Minute " (peaking at Number 41) -and remain virtually unknown to most American music fans. By combining a production of culture approach to organizational sociology, a musicological examination of the history and boundary maintenance of key genres, and a critical assessment of how the group's Black Britishness was presented and received, I argue that Five Star's short-lived visibility in the UK and invisibility in the US had little to do with the quality of their music and can be attributed to industry politics and the transnational impacts of prevailing notions of race, genre, and authenticity on popular music reception. Can't Wait Another Minute », ne se hisse qu'à la 41e position -et restera pratiquement inconnu de la plupart des amateurs de musique américains. En associant une sociologie des organisations fondée sur la production de la culture, avec un examen musicologique de l'histoire et de la définition des frontières des genres musicaux, et une évaluation critique de la façon dont l'identité britannique noire du groupe a été présentée et reçue, cet article montre comment la visibilité éphémère de Five Star au Royaume-Uni, et son invisibilité aux États-Unis, ont peu à voir avec la qualité de leur musique, mais doivent être attribuées aux politiques de l'industrie et aux impacts transnationaux des notions dominantes de race, de genre et d'authenticité sur la réception de la musique populaire.