The third peculiarity of the new youth culture in urban societies was its astonishing internationalism. Blue jeans and rock music became the marks of ‘modem’ youth, of the minorities destined to become majorities, in every country in which they were officially tolerated and in some where they were not, as in the USSR from the 1960s on (Starr, 1990, chapters 12 to 13). The English language of rock lyrics was often not even translated. This reflected the overwhelming cultural hegemony of the USA in popular culture and lifestyles, although it should be noted that the heartlands of Western youth culture themselves were the opposite of culturally chauvinist, especially in their musical tastes. They welcomed styles imported from the Caribbean, Latin America and, from the 1980s, increasingly Africa.

— Age of Extremes by Eric Hobsbawm