Common questions about New wave music

Short answers, pulled from the story.

Who renamed punk rock to new wave in October 1977?

Seymour Stein, the founder of Sire Records, launched a calculated campaign in October 1977 to rename the music that was rapidly consuming the underground scene. He did not want to call it punk because the word carried a stigma of violence and danger that would make his artists unmarketable to the mainstream American public. Stein and other industry insiders decided to rebrand the movement as new wave to distance the music from the chaos of the streets and make it palatable for radio play and record sales.

When did new wave music become the third most popular genre among teenagers in the United States?

New wave became the third most popular genre among teenagers in a 1982 Gallup poll, with 14% of teens rating it as their favorite type of music. The commercial peak of new wave in the United States coincided with the launch of MTV in 1981, which created a new platform for British acts to dominate the American charts. This era saw new wave become particularly strong on the West Coast, where race was not a factor in its appeal.

What visual and sonic characteristics defined the new wave genre in the 1970s?

New wave artists adopted a nervous, nerdy persona that seemed radical to audiences accustomed to traditional rock bravado. Bands like Devo and Talking Heads utilized robotic dancing, jittery high-pitched vocals, and clothing that hid the body, such as oversized suits and thick-rimmed glasses. Music historian Simon Reynolds described the genre as having a twitchy, agitated feel, characterized by choppy rhythm guitars with angular riffs and stop-start song structures.

Which British bands dominated the American charts after the launch of MTV in 1981?

Acts like Duran Duran, Culture Club, and ABC brought a new level of visual flair and pop sensibility to the genre, often overshadowing the earlier, more punk-influenced new wave bands. The launch of MTV in 1981 created a new platform for British acts to dominate the American charts, a phenomenon journalists labeled the Second British Invasion. The Buggles made history when Video Killed the Radio Star became the first music video played on MTV.

How did new wave music influence regional scenes in the Soviet Union and Spain during the 1980s?

In the Soviet Union, an underground music scene influenced by punk subculture led to the development of post-punk and new wave acts like Kino and Alyans, which later influenced the modern Sovietwave movement. In Spain, the death of dictator Francisco Franco gave rise to La Movida Madrileña, a countercultural movement centered in Madrid that drew influences from post-punk and synth-pop. These scenes were not mere copies of the American or British models but were unique expressions of local culture filtered through the new wave lens.

When did new wave music begin to decline in popularity in the United States and the United Kingdom?

By the mid-1980s, new wave began to decline in popularity, overtaken in the UK by the new pop and New Romantic movement, and in the US by the Second British Invasion. The genre's commercial peak had been short-lived, with many critics noting that it was a blip that barely touched the nascent alt-rock counterculture of the 1980s. In the UK, the term new wave was largely abandoned by journalists and music critics with the rise of synth-pop, which was promoted by a youth media interested in people who wanted to be pop stars.

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