I will be brief and let the music tell the story instead. In no particular order:

Bruce Springsteen, in Dublin. The Irish knew the words to several of these folk songs.

This song was made famous in the film 1917. It may have been British, but it crossed to America, where it became a thoroughly American spiritual. It had enough power to cross the Atlantic once more: this folk group, Hayde, is Danish.

In the film “A Royal Night Out,” Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret try out their Lindy Hop to the tune of Glenn Miller’s “American Patrol:”

And at the front end of this terrible war, Germans, in “Swing Kids,”–a film based on a real countercultural movement in Nazi Germany, swing to Benny Goodman’s “Swing Swing Swing.” Goodman, of course, was an American Jew. I do love this scene. Until its end.

The Supremes, two decades later, are a little adventurous, in Paris.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet, “Take Five,” Germany, 1966.

Chuck Berry in London, 1972.

Dionne Warwick, Belgium, 1964. This is incredible.

The Duke Ellington Orchestra in Amsterdam, 1958.

Taylor Swift in Paris, 2024. They know the words. In English.

Melanie, 23, in the Netherlands, 1970, with the sublime Edwin Hawkins singers.

Dolly Parton at Glastonbury, UK, 2024.

Many years before Dolly’s performance, this is what Americans meant to those who aren’t American: A Marine on Saipan feeds a little boy; a Frenchwoman greets an American soldier; an English family with a Yank at table for Christmas dinner.