Episode 199 How The Beatles Broke America

This week we are talking about the Beatles very first trip to America. This tour was short but soon followed by one of the most famous and groundbreaking tours of the time in music. At this point the Beatles were new to America, only known for a matter of months, and yet already they had a number one hit.

In this episode we'll learn about how they got so famous so fast and what technological and historical things impacted their rise to fame.

This week was a great opportunity to explore some common vocabulary for discussing music icons and extremely famous people and situations.

Vocabulary
synonymous - something that we think of as going together
meteoric rise to fame - a swift and fast rise to fame
arduous - uncomfortable and difficult
phenomenon - something we can't explain and don't know how it happened
Fab Four - A common nickname for the band
made the Beatles household names - 'household names' is an idiom that means someone or something becomes so famous that everyone knows their name.
Beatles mania - this is another common phrase used to describe the uncommon fame that accompanied the Beatles.
taken America by storm - idiom - if somewhere is 'taken by storm' then it means is very successful and everyone likes it
setting teenage hearts aflutter - we can also use 'fluttering'. 'Aflutter' and 'fluttering' describe the excitement of a new crush.
banned - not allowed to go somewhere
indecent - not accepted by society - at this time it was especially the religious society that were against Elvis and Rock and Roll generally.
crushes and stampedes - Stampede is when a herd of animals runs somewhere all together, it describes a mass movement without thought.
the music was drowned out - this phrasal verb means that one thing, the screams, is too loud to hear the other thing, the music.
reverberates - to echo around somewhere

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