| New Wave | |
| Stylistic origins | |
|---|---|
| Cultural origins |
Late 1970s United Kingdom and United States
|
| Typical instruments | |
| Mainstream popularity | Worldwide, late 1970s - around 1990, revived in the 2000s (Post-punk revival) |
| Derivative forms | Neue Deutsche Welle |
| Subgenres | |
| Synthpop – Electroclash – Electropop – Mod revival – Dance-punk | |
| Fusion genres | |
| Synthpunk – 2 Tone | |
| Regional scenes | |
| Belgium – Germany – United Kingdom – Yugoslavia | |
| Other topics | |
| Post-punk | |
New Wave is a genre of Rock music which originated from the late 1970s and the 1980s. It emerged from Punk Rock as a reaction against the popular music of the 1970s. New Wave incorporated various influences such as the rock 'n' roll styles of the pre-hippie era, ska, reggae, power pop, the mod subculture, electronic music, disco, funk, etc.
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The term New Wave itself is a source of much confusion. It was introduced in 1976 in Great Britain by Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren as an alternative label for what was also being called "punk". The term referenced the avant-garde, stylish French New Wave film movement of the 1960s. The label was soon picked up by British punk fanzines such as Sniffin' Glue and then the professional music press.[1] Thus, the term "New Wave" was initially interchangeable with "punk".[2]
In the United States, 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 U.S. 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". Like those film makers, his new artists, such as Ramones, Patti Smith and Talking Heads, were anti-corporate, experimental, and from a generation that had grown up as critical consumers of the art they now practiced.
Soon, listeners began to differentiate some of these musicians from "true punks". The music journalist Charles Shaar Murray, in writing about the Boomtown Rats, has indicated that the term New Wave became an industry catch-all for musicians affiliated with the punk movement, but in some way different from it:[3]
The Rats didn’t conform precisely to the notional orthodoxies of punk, but then neither did many other bands at the forefront of what those who were scared of the uncompromising term 'punk' later bowdlerized to New Wave. You weren’t allowed to have long hair! The Ramones did. Guitar solos verboten! The defence calls Television. Facial hair a capital offence! Two members of The Stranglers are in mortal danger. Age police on the prowl for wrinklies on the run! Cells await Ian Dury, Knox from The Vibrators and most of The Stranglers. Pedal steel guitars and country music too inextricably linked with Laurel Canyon coke-hippies and snooze-inducing Mellow Mafia singer/songwriterismo. Elvis Costello, you’re busted.
Music that followed the anarchic garage band ethos of the Sex Pistols was distinguished as "punk", while music that tended toward experimentation, lyrical complexity, or more polished production, was categorised as "New Wave". This came to include musicians who had come to prominence in the British pub rock scene of the mid-1970s, such as Ian Dury, Nick Lowe, Eddie and the Hot Rods and Dr Feelgood; [4] acts associated with the New York club CBGBs, such as Television, Patti Smith, and Blondie; and singer-songwriters who were noted for their barbed lyrical wit, such as Elvis Costello, Tom Robinson and Joe Jackson. Furthermore, many artists who would have originally been classified as punk were also termed New Wave. A 1977 Phonogram compilation album of the same name (New Wave) features US artists including the Dead Boys, Ramones, Talking Heads and The Runaways.[5]
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, as Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Cure, Soft Cell, and The Psychedelic Furs. 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.
Tom Petty has jokingly taken credit for "inventing" New Wave. He has been quoted as saying that journalists struggled to define his band, The Heartbreakers, recognizing they were not punk rock, but still wanting 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."[6]
New Wave in the United States is a popular catchall term used to describe music that emerged in the late 1970s and crested during the 1982-1983 period in what was dubbed the second British Invasion when groups deemed “New Wave” scored high on the charts. The music of artists deemed “New Wave” in the late 1970s such as Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello,[7] The Police,[8] Gary Numan[9], and Squeeze[10] dovetails with the original definition of the genre.[11] Many of these artists eschewed the label; Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze said: "It's not a label I would give to us. I think we could be called Pop music."[12]
Starting in the early 1980s and continuing until around 1988, the term "New Wave" was used in America to describe nearly every new pop or pop rock artist that largely used synthesizers. Examples of artists defined in the United States as New Wave during this period that would not fit the original definition include Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls, Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, Thompson Twins, Tears For Fears, The Human League, Men Without Hats, Thomas Dolby, and Culture Club. [13][14][15][16][17][18][19]
The term was even used within songs of the genre, such as in the opening lyrics to the 1980 Loverboy hit song The Kid Is Hot Tonight:
In the early 1990s, the British music weekly NME grouped together a number of guitar-based bands under the unwieldy banner New Wave of New Wave. These groups, including S*M*A*S*H, These Animal Men, Elastica and Echobelly, drew on the aesthetics of 1970s New Wave, including spiky guitars, tight-fitting suits and skinny ties.
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 first decade of the 21st century, the electroclash scene in Brooklyn and London at clubs like Nag Nag Nag revived the synth-pop aesthetic for kids born in the 1980s. Many other indie rock bands re-popularized New Wave sounds as part of the post-punk revival movement with varying success, most popularly the Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, The Bravery and New Orleans' Mute Math. Other bands/artists who have brought back New Wave music in the new decade have been the Epoxies, TheStart, Gwen Stefani, Ladyhawke, The Sounds, Santogold, Lights, Vernian Process and the The Ting Tings[20][21].
New Wave fashions were a conscious reaction to the hippie styles of the 1960s, which had spilled over into the mainstream by the late 1970s. Thus, flares and long hair for men were replaced by more body-conscious clothing and shorter, often spiky, hairstyles. The tight-fitting suits and thin ties worn by Blondie on the cover of their album Parallel Lines epitomise the New Wave look, which harks back to the rock and roll styles of the pre-hippie era.
Another aspect was a desire to embrace contemporary synthetic materials as simultaneously a protest against and celebration of plastic. This involved the use of spandex, bright colors (such as fluorescents), and mass-produced, tawdry jewelry and ornaments, typified by the dayglo aesthetic of the band X-Ray Spex. As a fashion movement, then, New Wave was both a post-modern belief in creative pastiche and a continuation of Pop Art’s satire of and fascination with manufacturing. An important offshoot of new wave fashion was the New Romantic movement, which emphasized androgyny and extensive use of synthetic-looking cosmetics for both genders.
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