New Wave (depeche mode, electronic, dance, metal, punk)

VEGANGELICA · 06-09-2010, 06:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burning Down

I always liked the Police, the Cars, and REM. Those three bands were on heavy rotation in my house when I was a kid. But I don't know if REM is really considered New Wave, I'm pretty sure many people considered them just an alternative to what was mainstream at the time, seeing as they only became more mainstream with the release of Document in 1987.

After reading this thread, I became confused, too, about what is considered New Wave music...especially since "New Wave" music that I heard in the '80s was my favorite, but some of the bands listed in this thread weren't what *I* thought "New Wave" meant.

So I looked on Wikipedia to find out how others define New Wave. I realized the definition has changed over time. In the U.S. in the late 1970s, "New Wave" meant British punk bands, but the definition shifted in the U.S. in the 1980s to mean bands that played energetic, fast-paced, but quirkier and prettier music, often with synthesizer...and then became even broader...

Quote:

New Wave music - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the 1980s the term "New Wave" was used in America to describe nearly every new pop or pop rock artist that largely used synthesizers. New Wave is still used today to describe these acts, as well as late 1970s and 1980s post punk and alternative acts.

Fans, music journalists, and artists would rebel against this catch-all definition by inventing dozens of genre names. Synthpop, which filled a void left by disco,[35] was a broad subgenre that included groups such as The Human League, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, a-ha, New Order, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Ultravox and the Pet Shop Boys.

Back when I was in high school in the '80s, punk music had just made its way to my high school, so school dances began to get more exciting due to all my black-clad, spiky-haired classmates. But simultaneously, "New Wave" music was being played a lot...and at the time I felt New Wave music was quirky, fast-paced, a little subversive, and prettier than punk (more lyrical).

I would have said that "New Wave" music included XTC (whom I liked) and The Talking Heads (whose music I didn't like). I liked The Cars and loved Cheap Trick, but I didn't think of them as "New Wave" at the time, although apparently they got classified as such in the U.S. I also didn't think of REM as "New Wave"...somehow they didn't sound peculiar enough to me. REM's music didn't have a sense of humor or irony that I associate with New Wave. Like you, I just thought of them as "alternative."

Here are examples of songs I felt were New Wave back in the 80s:

XTC - Senses Working Overtime (1982)

The Vapors - Turning Japanese (1980)