New Wave music
New Wave is a term that has been used to describe many developments in music, but is most commonly associated with a movement in
American,
Australian,
British,
Canadian and
European popular music, in the late
1970s and early
1980s born out of the
punk rock movement. The genre was fashionable during the 1980s and became somewhat popular again during the
2000s.
The term New Wave itself is a source of much confusion. Originally,
Seymour Stein, the head of
Sire Records, needed a term by which he could market his newly signed bands, who had frequently played the club
CBGB. Because
radio consultants in the
US had advised their clients that punk rock was a
fad (and because many stations that had embraced
disco had been hurt by the backlash), Stein settled on the term "new wave." He felt that the music was the musical equivalent of the
French New Wave film movement of the
1960s. Like those film makers, his new artists (most notably
Talking Heads) were anti-
corporate, experimental, and a generation that had grown up as critical consumers of the art they now practised. Thus, the term "new wave" was initially interchangeable with "punk rock". During this period of interchangebility, the "new wave" was seen by many as a third distinct movement in
rock music, the
Rock and Roll of the
1950s being the "first wave', the
British Invasions of the
1960s being the "second wave". This latest "third wave" of the
1970s was then the "new wave".
Very soon, listeners themselves began to see these musicians as different from their compatriots. Music that followed the anarchic
garage band ethos of
The Ramones (such as the
Sex Pistols) was distinguished as "punk", while music that tended toward
experimentation, lyrical complexity, or more polished production, such as
Talking Heads,
Blondie,
Television,
Patti Smith,
The B-52's,
Devo,
Tubeway Army, and
Cock Robin among others, were called "New Wave". However, those artists were
all originally classified as punk.
Tom Petty (probably in jest) has taken credit for "inventing" New Wave. In the book
Conversations with Tom Petty by Paul Zollo (Omnibus, 2005), he says journalists struggled to define the band, recognising they were not
punk rock, but still wanted to identify them with
Elvis Costello and the
Sex Pistols. He also suggests — again, probably half-jokingly — that the song "When the Time Comes" from the
You're Gonna Get It! album (1978) "might have started New Wave. Maybe that was the one."
Eventually, the term was applied indiscriminately to any band, with attitude, that did not embrace the simplistic, loud-fast playing style, whether that meant that their sound was
reggae,
ska, or experimental. Thus,
The (English) Beat,
R.E.M. and
The Police were equally New Wave, even though these bands would have as little in common as they would with punk bands such as
The Clash.
Later still,
New Wave came to imply a less noisy, more pop sound, and to include acts manufactured by record labels, while the term "
post-punk" was coined to describe the darker, less pop-influenced groups. Although distinct, punk, New Wave, and post-punk all shared common ground: an energetic reaction to the supposedly overproduced, uninspired popular music of the 1970s. Many groups fit easily into two or all three of the categories over their lifespan.
When
MTV started broadcasting in
1981, New Wave got a boost as many
music videos were of this genre. New Wave artists had been innovators in the use of videos to promote themselves in the years prior to MTV by showing them primarily in clubs. Subsequently, New Wave became strongly associated with the decade, often being seen as the quintessential
1980s music.
New Wave is sometimes considered to have died by about
1986, although it still influenced pop music production up to about
1992. In the late 1990s, the
Omaha, Nebraska-based band
The Faint drew heavily upon New Wave to create its debut album
Media, released on
Saddle Creek Records in 1998. In the 1990s, the popular band
No Doubt exemplified a New Wave style in many ways. In the first decade of the 21st century, the
electroclash scene in Brooklyn and London (at clubs like
Luxx and
Nag Nag Nag) ironically revived the New Wave aesthetic for kids born in the 80s. Many other
indie rock bands re-popularized New Wave sounds with varying success, most popularly
Interpol,
The Killers and recently (as of 2006) the bands
Editors and
Cute Phase.
New Wave is also commonly used to describe the style and fashion associated with New Wave music. Examples include hairstyles of the band
A Flock of Seagulls and
The Thompson Twins, and
Elvis Costello's bi-colored glasses poster.
As fashion, there were two major components of New Wave adornment. First, there was an eclectic revivalism. This included iconic revival fashions of the 1950s and 1960s. For example, thin neckties,
rockabilly fashions, and
mod culture from the
1950s, as well as
Paisley prints from the 1960s.
The other part was a desire to embrace contemporary
synthetic materials as a protest and celebration of "
plastic". This involved the use of
spandex, bright colors (such as fluorescents), and mass-produced, tawdry ornaments. As a fashion movement then, New Wave was both a post-modern belief in creative
pastiche and a continuation of
Pop Art's satire and fascination with manufacturing.
New Wave revivalists are currently very popular in New York and LA (centering around nightclubs like New York's
Misshapes and featured in art and fashion magazines like
Visionaire). The style has also recently been a major influence in high fashion, for example in the most recent collections of designers like
Scott Gerst and
Hedi Slimane.
*
Key songs of the New Wave and Synthpop scene*
List of New Wave bands and artists*
:Category:New Wave groups*
New Romantic*
Darkwave*
Synthpop*
Two-Tone ska revival
*
Power pop*
Mod Revival*1980s
Electronic music*
Rockabilly revival
*
Neue Deutsche Welle*
Novi val*
Synth rock*
Electropop*
New wave of new wave*
Post-punk
