Traces of the Space Race in the British Pop Music of the 1960s

The British absence from this “two-horse race” does not mean, of course, that it had no impact whatsoever beyond the Channel. Thus, in White Heat. A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (2007), Dominic Sandbrook connects the interest in cosmonautics with a widespread attraction towards developments in science, engineering, and technology, and recalls that, as early as 1957, Harold Wilson described the times as “(…) an age of sputniks and space travel and of scientific achievement proceeding at a staggering rate’ (…)” (54). We will then seek to illustrate that “structure of feeling” (Raymond Williams) through the display, commented upon, of some videoclips of the British pop of the Sixties.