When did New Wave DIE?

[react010]

There were certainly a lot of gems in 85-86, i agree, but indeed it was more to do with the 'Wham' kinda thing...all good looks and not-so-good music. Btw: Sigue Sigue Sputnik....did they EVER make MUSIC ??[8D]. Never impressed me, that's for sure !.

[Bitter Almonds]

[quote][i]Originally posted by react010[/i]
<br>There were certainly a lot of gems in 85-86, i agree, but indeed it was more to do with the 'Wham' kinda thing...all good looks and not-so-good music. Btw: Sigue Sigue Sputnik....did they EVER make MUSIC ??[8D]. Never impressed me, that's for sure !.
[/quote]

Haha. Yeah, all that band was was a broken keyboard and a pair of mesh stockings[:D]

[hexicon]

1984, with release of "The Smiths." Don't get me wrong; I like the Smiths a lot. But to me it took things off in an entirely different direction, musically, lyrically, stylistically.

[thefxc]

1991.

Based on my belief that: a) late 80s college radio/alternative music was the natural progression of new wave, if not the real thing; b) Nirvana, grunge, the decline of US indie labels, and the appropriation of the term "alternative" by record company promo departments ended the party by the Fall of '91.

[whistledog]

I'd say around 1987. Seemed like around that time was when Hair Metal, Rap and Acid/House was breaking into the charts

[react010]

Don't you think that New-Wave ended long before 1991 ?.
Personally i think that New-Wave was long gone dead by 1991 (not music as such, but New-Wave, let's nog get confused here in this topic... 'alternative music' excists to this very day but we are talking about New-Wave here).
As for the Smiths... in my opinion they really grew as the years had gone by. The last Album they made 'Strangeways Here We Come' (1987) was Ab-Fab in my opinion, better then they had ever done before. But it WAS the end of an 'era' i reckon. So...i'll meet you halfway in this discussion, 1987 was really the end of New-Wave, after that Acid & Techno & House soon took over big-time.

[British]

It seems to me Sigue Sigue Sputnik was 99% image + hype, 1% music.

And with that music, it was the same melody used over and over again. Love missle f1-11 and 21st century Boy sound the same, but with different lyrics.

[dearly beloved]

I'm with '85. probably right at the end, cuz I do remember a few great singles around that Christmas. After that it was mostly newer bands poorly recycling and the originals running out of ideas...or maybe my tastes were just changing.

[Frank_Chickens]

[quote][i]Originally posted by British[/i]
<br>It seems to me Sigue Sigue Sputnik was 99% image + hype, 1% music.

And with that music, it was the same melody used over and over again. Love missle f1-11 and 21st century Boy sound the same, but with different lyrics.
[/quote]

You should of heard the rest of the first album... [xx(]

Note how nobody since has been stupid enough to include adverts in between the tracks since.

Note that this post contains more notes than the first sorry album did. :/

[knowitallrecs]

New Wave never died; it simply evolved.

To say that it perished only gives validity to the claims of its critics, who falsely claimed that the genre had no longevity. I refuse to give them the satisfaction or bookmark the style's lifespan between the good and bad years of my life or when a particular "sound" from its variety of flavors disappeared from radio or MTV. New Wave icons such as Echo & the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, Erasure, the Cure, Simple Minds, the Lotus Eaters, the Church, Lloyd Cole, the Ocean Blue, among numerous others, continued to release albums after any so-called expiration date. Furthermore, young groups like Mono In VCF, Rialto, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, the Pin-Up Girls,
Kaiser Chiefs, and the Killers can be played alongside "Rock of the '80s" and fool numerous people who didn't know they were new acts. (And it does work, too.)

New Wave, like heavy metal and hip-hop, simply absorbed more textures as the years progressed, adopting the latest technology, instrumentation, and recording techniques.

Dead? Only in the minds of people who refuse to accept change.

Dead? Only in the minds of critics who hated it in the first place.

Dead? Only in the minds of record companies who never understood it and wanted the country to move on.

New Wave is alive and well.

Michael Sutton
Staff Writer: The All-Music Guide

[Shoyrtt]

[quote][i]Originally posted by whistledog[/i]
<br>I'd say around 1987. Seemed like around that time was when Hair Metal, Rap and Acid/House was breaking into the charts
[/quote]
X2

[Ollie Stench]

Personally for me it was 1986. That's when rap took over, and all the creativity had been exhausted by the originators like The Clash, The Jam, DEVO, The B-52's, Eurythmics etc. (of course that's a blanket statement, please don't tear me a new one over it as there are many exceptions).

Duran Duran were the biggest mainstream band in the world, Live Aid had brought alot of underground bands up to the general public's attention.

Call it death or evolution, it just wasn't the same after early 1986.

[dearly beloved]

Originally posted by knowitallrecs
<br>New Wave never died; it simply evolved.

To say that it perished only gives validity to the claims of its critics, who falsely claimed that the genre had no longevity. I refuse to give them the satisfaction or bookmark the style's lifespan between the good and bad years of my life or when a particular "sound" from its variety of flavors disappeared from radio or MTV. New Wave icons such as Echo & the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, Erasure, the Cure, Simple Minds, the Lotus Eaters, the Church, Lloyd Cole, the Ocean Blue, among numerous others, continued to release albums after any so-called expiration date. Furthermore, young groups like Mono In VCF, Rialto, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, the Pin-Up Girls,
Kaiser Chiefs, and the Killers can be played alongside "Rock of the '80s" and fool numerous people who didn't know they were new acts. (And it does work, too.)

New Wave, like heavy metal and hip-hop, simply absorbed more textures as the years progressed, adopting the latest technology, instrumentation, and recording techniques.

Dead? Only in the minds of people who refuse to accept change.

Dead? Only in the minds of critics who hated it in the first place.

Dead? Only in the minds of record companies who never understood it and wanted the country to move on.

New Wave is alive and well.

Michael Sutton
Staff Writer: The All-Music Guide

I can appreciate the tenets you employ in defense of the music we all love, knowitallrecs.

You're right that New Wave can never die in that there are forums like the NWOutpost and scads of young bands that (for the most part) adequately ape the genre. But yeah, the New Wave most of us knew some 20 odd years ago is dead. Not because it's a facet of modern music that had no depth, longevity or viability, but rather because all those original ideas and inspirations could only have happened at that time, demanding relevance, defining a generation as a reaction to things concurrent to that day.
Just as England's Punk movement was a reaction to stodgy old rock dinosaurs, or as grunge was a reaction to hair metal pretense.

As its harshest critics blasted it as pre-packaged non-music, the joke was on them. New Wave could only have happened at the time that it did. It smeared lipstick on the dour countenance of Post-Punk. It mirrored early eighties world excess and spat it right back in our faces. We loved NW for it....and still do.

Long live New Wave.

[knowitallrecs]

[quote][i]Originally posted by dearly beloved[/i]
<br>[quote][i]Originally posted by knowitallrecs[/i]
<br>New Wave never died; it simply evolved.

To say that it perished only gives validity to the claims of its critics, who falsely claimed that the genre had no longevity. I refuse to give them the satisfaction or bookmark the style's lifespan between the good and bad years of my life or when a particular "sound" from its variety of flavors disappeared from radio or MTV. New Wave icons such as Echo & the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, Erasure, the Cure, Simple Minds, the Lotus Eaters, the Church, Lloyd Cole, the Ocean Blue, among numerous others, continued to release albums after any so-called expiration date. Furthermore, young groups like Mono In VCF, Rialto, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, the Pin-Up Girls,
Kaiser Chiefs, and the Killers can be played alongside "Rock of the '80s" and fool numerous people who didn't know they were new acts. (And it does work, too.)

New Wave, like heavy metal and hip-hop, simply absorbed more textures as the years progressed, adopting the latest technology, instrumentation, and recording techniques.

Dead? Only in the minds of people who refuse to accept change.

Dead? Only in the minds of critics who hated it in the first place.

Dead? Only in the minds of record companies who never understood it and wanted the country to move on.

New Wave is alive and well.

Michael Sutton
Staff Writer: The All-Music Guide
[/quote]

I can appreciate the tenets you employ in defense of the music we all love, knowitallrecs.

You're right that New Wave can never die in that there are forums like the NWOutpost and scads of young bands that (for the most part) adequately ape the genre. But yeah, the New Wave most of us knew some 20 odd years ago is dead. Not because it's a facet of modern music that had no depth, longevity or viability, but rather because all those original ideas and inspirations could only have happened at that time, demanding relevance, defining a generation as a reaction to things concurrent to that day.
Just as England's Punk movement was a reaction to stodgy old rock dinosaurs, or as grunge was a reaction to hair metal pretense.

As it's harshest critics blasted it as pre-packaged non-music, the joke was on them. New Wave could only have happened at the time that it did. It smeared lipstick on the dour countenenace of Post-Punk. It mirrored early eighties world excess and spat it right back in our faces. We loved NW for it....and still do.

Long live New Wave.
[/quote]

But wasn't the whole point of New Wave was to be progressive? To say that the genre only existed within a period of time, to me, goes against the genre's original purpose - to look into the future instead of being shackled by the past. It was supposed to evolve and not remain the same. Of course, New Wave in 2005 is not going to sound like New Wave in 1980. Your argument is well articulated, but I refuse to believe that New Wave could've only happened during a specific period. History repeats itself, socially and politically, and youths have an inherent need to rebel and discover their own individuality. Franz Ferdinand, the Pin-Up Girls, and Bloc Party are providing the same "fuck you" statements to rap-metal and corporate slush that Depeche Mode, Echo & the Bunnymen, and the Cure did in the '80s. You can look at New Wave as a cultural phenomenon that lasted from the late '70s to the early '80s, but there's dramatic stylistic growth in those years, too. The New Wave of 1977 was radically different from the New Wave of 1982. Shouldn't the New Wave of 1982 not be called New Wave then since it wasn't the same as the New Wave of 1977, which was more punk and certainly nowhere near as synth-based? If you look at it objectively instead of, "Oh, it ended in 1983 because I didn't like how it sounded anymore," you will see that the evolution of the genre had been in place the whole time and continued to the present time. To me, New Wave is an artform and not an artifact. I find it ironic that many people consider the lifespan of New Wave defined by the years of its most commercial success, the very thing that the genre was supposed to be against. (In the Philippines, New Wave didn't fade in popularity until 1991 when grunge and finally metal invaded. We never understood why American radio was hardly playing it anymore by the mid-'80s when we had three New Wave radio stations to choose from.) If New Wave was supposed to be an underground movement, then how did it die if it merely crawled back beyond mainstream consciousness?

Michael Sutton
Staff Writer: The All-Music Guide

[hexicon]

[quote][i]Originally posted by barrisfan[/i]
<br>i voted for 1984 because that was when the truly great new wave station in seattle went off the air...KYYX
[/quote]

To make a different point than Knowitallrecs, I'm with Barrisfan. At a very personal level, that's when it ended for me. The Smiths' first US release and the end of KYYX roughly coincided with the spring of 1984, and my high school graduation, and nothing was the same after that. Easy living, nightlife, ephemeral dance tunes by Tin Tin and Cee Farrow--for me, it was all wiped away by college, financial demands, and the guitar-driven angst of the Smiths, even though Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, and Echo & Bunnymen had great NW releases in 1986 and 87.

I agree that--objectively speaking--New Wave mutated, evolved, and adapted, and its continuity can be traced both directly and by influence. But for me, New Wave was an experience, a mind-set, and a nightlifestyle [:D] as well as a musical style and it all ended in 1984.