On the surface/if you have only heard their singles bands like New Order and Human League seem very basic, but they have a lot of songs that are very long and deviate from the standard structure, like “The Perfect Kiss” and “Sound of the Crowd”. Even Duran Duran made some pretty proggy songs like “The Chauffeur”.
I consider new wave to be the bubblegum and more accessible side of prog. After all it largely grew out of Prog, building up from what Bowie, Roxy Music and Genesis started in the 70s.
Seriously though, I think Talk Talk are the Pink Floyd of the 80s. The Colour of Spring sounds just as good to me high as* Dark Side of the Moon*. I appreciate New Wave because I enjoy good musicianship that isn’t boring, and a lot of technically good artists make very boring music.
The biggest issue with new wave music is that label’s given to a lot of bands who aren’t remotely new wave. Talking Heads and Blondie are new wave. The Human League and Duran Duran are New Romantic. New Order is synthpop.
In its purest form, new wave is a more mainstream, less aggressive version of punk rock. Any connection to 70’s prog is tenuous at best.
Yeah I’d agree with Buddha that New Wave was a more mainstream, less aggressive version of punk rock, not prog. Prog rock was never aggressive.
Underrated? I don’t think so. As a sound/genre, it had its time, and left.
That said, as a listener I never bothered to go deep catalog on New Wave, except maybe The Cars and Pretenders. And when I did, there wasn’t much there. They were hits-based. MTV diffused the genre.
I disagree. New wave might have originally meant a certain kind of punk rock, but the term became applied to a whole umbrella of styles quite early on, like by 1983-84 or so at the latest. New Romantics and the American groups cross influenced each other a ton too.
Besides post-punk is different from punk, and even though New Wave took a lot from punk it’s far more musicianship-centered.
So M83, Owl City, Passion Pit, Chromeo, La Roux, Ellie Goulding, The Killers, those are just obscure garage acts nobody has heard about?
Okay, I guess none of those would qualify as household names (aside from possibly Owl City and Ellie Goulding). But I think New Wave is probably more popular now than it has been since the '80s ended, especially when you consider that many of the old artists have toured again in the past 5 years. I saw OMD in 2011 and I heard Devo were great on their last tour, shame two of them died!
I don’t get the sense New Wave is underrated at all. That time of underground rock (the blur between post-punk and New Wave and some of the other subgenres described here) is my favorite for rock music, and, as you note, its influence is still heard many years on. How is underrated exactly?
I guess I mean compared to say blues-rock like Zeppelin or Cream, or more pure Prog like Pink Floyd and Rush bands like New Order and Talking Heads don’t get a lot of respect. High school kids still listen to 60s and 70s classic rock, but few listen to 80s music. Even though the 80s are definitely considered classic now people still view their music as inferior to previous decades even though we all know the 90s is when music started to suck.
Interesting, it caused me to add The Police and Talking Heads to the list of New Wave.
But New Wave at the time, seemed to me like it was a backlash against disco, but only marginally punk. Remember skinny ties? How long did that last? That was New Wave.
But everything after MTV was: how can I get on MTV?
I was a fan when it was big and New Wave definitely had its roots in punk, though it moved more toward a synthesizer sound. It actually was very exciting time, with people like the B-52s, Blondie, The Boomtown Rats, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Eurhytmics, Tim Curry, Joe Jackson, INXS, Madness, the Pretenders, Souixsee and the Banshees, and others.
The problem is that the genre was never clearly defined – pop with synthesizers was common, but not necessary – and it became a catchall for multiple styles.
I’m a fan of both prog and New Wave. In both cases, I think, you had some pretty great bands… and then you had the rest. Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis and King Crimson all have albums that stand the test of time; so do The Police, The Cars, Blondie and Talking Heads.
I think the major problem is MTV, which rose alongside New Wave and helped to make those same bands seem somehow less authentic in hindsight. So much emphasis was put on image that even if the music was good, it was much easier to dismiss it as having little substance. The whole genre suffered because of it.
The biggest reasons new wave is underrated are:
–it was such a vague term, defined more by influences than by actual sound. Refer to a band as “prog” or “grunge”, and instantly you can get an idea of what they sound like. New wave not so much, which led to the second problem…
–…the public associated “new wave” with low rent acts better known for haircuts than their music. Never mind lots of great new waves weren’t like that (can you imagine Joe Jackson with pink hair?), the image of new wave as a freak show stuck and hasn’t let go.
That being said, new wave has its greatest impact it’s ever had. Look at a recent week at the rock charts. The keyboard heavy/blues-adverse sound of commercial rock these days is far more reminiscent of the Cars than Led Zeppelin.
I’m glad that Ellie Goulding’s been mentioned. Lights is a wonderful update of early 1980’s pop for 2010’s kids. The influence is obvious to me and it’s one of the precious few songs I love from the current decade.
As far as New Wave is concerned I’d say that three elements are needed:
1 - An “anyone can play music” attitude coming directly from punk.
2 - An ear for catchy and dramatic, borderline epic melodies.
3 - Last but not least: prominent synthesizers and electronic sound effects. I know it’s a point that some will vehemently disagree with but to me The Talking Heads and The Police are post-punk, not New Wave. Visage, Depeche Mode, some 1980-83 The Cure, The Human League, Duran Duran are New Wave.
This is why I lop post-punk and New Wave pretty much into one category and generally just say “post-punk/New Wave” when needing to address one of these genres. To me post-punk and New Wave are quite similar, with post-punk going more the art rock way and New Wave going more the pop way. And many bands are all three (for me, the Police can be punk, post-punk, or New Wave.) Devo to me feels more post-punk than New Wave, although most (I think) would probably classify them as the latter because of the synths, and I’d say they also are one of these bands that, depending on what song or what time period, could be punk, post-punk, or New Wave. Talking Heads to me is more New Wave, but I wouldn’t argue with someone calling them post-punk.
For me, trying to separate post-punk from New Wave is almost impossible to get anyone to agree. The genres themselves are so diverse. I tend to lop the more radio-listener friendly stuff like Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, later Police, etc., into “New Wave,” and the more rough-around-the-edges or experimental stuff, like Gang of Four, Wire, Joy Division, early Pretenders, into “post-punk.” (But, of course, Pretenders are New Wave, as well.) And, of course, there is the more “pop” definition of “New Wave,” at least here in the US, that pretty much just means early-to-mid-80s synthpop.
Well, yes, that’s part of the problem, as mentioned earlier. Especially in the USA the nature of the genre-based charting/programming schemes in commercial radio and music press in the 1980s left a lot of the public with “New Wave” as an amorphous catch-all.
And the lack of respect, also as mentioned before, was aided and abetted a lot by the MTV effect that did cast it in the public consciousness as all about the Haircut Bands.
