New wave music
[29][30] Later, critical consensus favored "new wave" as an umbrella term involving many contemporary popular music styles, including synth-pop, alternative dance and post-punk.
[31] The common characteristics of new wave music include a humorous or quirky pop approach, angular guitar riffs, jerky rhythms, the use of electronics, and a distinctive visual style in fashion.
[34][35][36] New wave music encompassed a wide variety of styles that shared a quirky, lighthearted, and humorous tone[37] that were popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
New wave musicians often played choppy rhythm guitars with fast tempos; keyboards, and stop-start song structures and melodies are common.
A nervous, nerdy persona was a common characteristic of new wave fans, and acts such as Talking Heads, Devo, and Elvis Costello.
[41] This took the forms of robotic dancing, jittery high-pitched vocals, and clothing fashions that hid the body such as suits and big glasses.
[43] New wave may be seen as an attempt to reconcile "the energy and rebellious attitude of punk" with traditional forms of pop songwriting, as seen in the rockabilly riffs and classic craftsmanship of Elvis Costello and the 1960s mod influences of the Jam.
[5] In the early 1980s, particularly in the United States, notable new wave acts embraced a crossover of pop and rock music with African and African-American styles.
They viewed bombastic progressive rock groups like Emerson Lake and Palmer and Pink Floyd with disdain, and instead channeled their energies into a more stripped back sound… The media, however, portrayed punk groups like the Sex Pistols and their fans as violent and unruly, and eventually punk acquired a stigma—especially in the United States—that made the music virtually unmarketable.
At the same time, a number of bands, such as the Cars, the Police and Elvis Costello and the Attractions, soon emerged who combined the energy and rebellious attitude of punk with a more accessible and sophisticated radio-friendly sound.
[44]As early as 1973, critics including Nick Kent and Dave Marsh were using the term "new wave" to classify New York–based groups such as the Velvet Underground and New York Dolls.
[56] In the US, many of the first new wave groups were the not-so-punk acts associated with CBGB (e.g. Talking Heads, Mink DeVille and Blondie),[34] as well as the proto-punk scene in Ohio, which included Devo, the Electric Eels, Rocket from the Tombs, and Pere Ubu.
A 1977 Phonogram Records compilation album of the same name (New Wave) includes American bands Dead Boys, Ramones, Talking Heads, and the Runaways.
[63] In November 1976, Caroline Coon used Malcolm McLaren's term "new wave" to designate music by bands that were not exactly punk but were related to the punk-music scene.
[64] The mid-1970s British pub rock scene was the source of many of the most-commercially-successful new wave acts, such as Ian Dury, Nick Lowe, Eddie and the Hot Rods, and Dr.
[68][page needed] The term "post-punk" was coined to describe groups who were initially considered part of new wave but were more ambitious, serious, challenging, darker, and less pop-oriented.
Writing in 1990, the "Dean of American Rock Critics" Robert Christgau, who gave punk and new wave bands major coverage in his column for The Village Voice in the late 1970s, defined "new wave" as "a polite term devised to reassure people who were scared by punk, it enjoyed a two- or three-year run but was falling from favor as the '80s began.
"[39] Chuck Eddy, who wrote for The Village Voice in the 1980s, said in a 2011 interview that by the time of British new pop acts' popularity on MTV, "New Wave had already been over by then.
[77] According to authors Stuart Borthwick and Ron Moy, "After the monochrome blacks and greys of punk/new wave, synth-pop was promoted by a youth media interested in people who wanted to be pop stars, such as Boy George and Adam Ant".
"[79] Scholar Russ Bestley noted that while punk, new wave, and post-punk songs had featured on the Top of the Pops album series between mid-1977 and early 1982, by the time of the first Now That's What I Call Music!
"[78] By the 2000s, critical consensus favored "new wave" to be an umbrella term that encompasses power pop, synth-pop, ska revival, and the soft strains of punk rock.
Continuing into the next year, public support remained limited to select elements of the artistic, bohemian, and intellectual population[63] as arena rock and disco dominated the charts.
[85] In early 1979, Eve Zibart of The Washington Post noted the contrast between "the American audience's lack of interest in New Wave music" compared to critics, with a "stunning two-thirds of the Top 30 acts" in the 1978 Pazz & Jop poll falling into the "New Wave-to-rock 'n' roll revivalist spectrum".
[33] At the end of 1979, Dave Marsh wrote in Time that the Knack's success confirmed rather than began the new wave movement's commercial rise, which had been signaled in 1978 by hits for the Cars and Talking Heads.
[89] In 1980, there were brief forays into new wave-style music by non-new wave artists Billy Joel (Glass Houses), Donna Summer (The Wanderer), and Linda Ronstadt (Mad Love).
[33] Early in 1980, influential radio consultant Lee Abrams wrote a memo saying with a few exceptions, "we're not going to be seeing many of the new wave circuit acts happening very big [in the US].
Not a single punk band broke through big in America, and in Britain John Travolta sold more albums than the entire New Wave.
"[91] Lee Ferguson, a consultant to KWST, said in an interview Los Angeles radio stations were banning disc jockeys from using the term and noted; "Most of the people who call music new wave are the ones looking for a way not to play it".
[99] New wave soundtracks were used in mainstream Brat Pack films such as Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and The Breakfast Club, as well as in the low-budget hit Valley Girl.
[113] AllMusic notes the emergence of these acts "led journalists and music fans to talk about a post-punk/new wave revival" while arguing it was "really more analogous to a continuum, one that could be traced back as early as the mid-'80s".
