A New Wave of Emotion

Written by Christopher Pentecost on February 7, 2024

All right, let’s take a break from the drabness that is my life on a day-to-day basis and focus ourselves into something that maybe gives me a little bit of joy. Which is going to be funny because most of the themes in the music that I’m about to bring up are slightly more depressing. It’s about unrequited love, it’s about growing up weird, it’s about being different. It’s a music genre that is born out of punk, and I love Punk, but we aren’t going to start with that because I really love New Wave.

New Wave came out of punk influences in the artistic scenes in and around Europe and definitely New York. A lot of the bands that are attributed to New Wave in their infancy were more arty but in a way that was different from, say, a prog rock Rush. These were kids that came out of punk rock, basically from white middle-class backgrounds. They were like art students exploring different themes and topics in and around this new explosion of a more gritty counterculture than what the hippies were. They liked to slam dance to the hard rock guitars of the Ramones, The Sex Pistols, The Cult, but also liked the danceiness of disco. With these two at odds with each other, they started to meld and create a new genre that expanded across multiple genres.

Now, even as we talk about this, you still have New Wave bands that focus on the more rock side of things. Bands like The Smiths, bands like The Cure, bands like Devo and The B-52’s, a very guitar-centric sound. But then you also have on the other side the danceier side where the use of synthesizers and drum machines overtook the basicness of two guitars, a bass, and drums. Here you get bands like Depeche Mode, the Pet Shop Boys, The Human League, bands that you can dance to and feel free to move without the need to bump into other people.

Some of these bands combine the two, bands like ABC, Men At Work, A Flock of Seagulls, being able to make a more synthesizer-fronted sound but still being musicians and having a rock band aesthetic. And like things moving into the ’80s, the hair became more wild and bigger, Flock of Seagulls, of course, probably one of the most iconic styles of hair.

A lot of the popular New Wave acts that came out in the ’80s were picked up by movie directors, people like John Hughes being able to use the music of the time to show what kids were like in that snapshot of time. Where I found my love for this music was always attributed to those kids who never felt like they fit in, the kids in 16 Candles, Pretty in Pink, and The Breakfast Club. These were the most iconic of these movies and yet they were using some of the more dancey, moodier music. And it really solidified the fact that even as an outcast and an outsider, a person who’s going through puberty and just feeling just weird, that there was a soundtrack to that and there were films that allowed you to relate. And I think through those films and seeing the music in those films allowed me to relate to these songs better.

A lot of the bands used by John Hughes were The Psychedelic Furs, Simple Minds, and OMD, or as I like to say, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark. And of course, the more people can relate to them, the better they did in the charts, because people wanted to go out and buy the albums.

I like New Wave because it gave me a sense of belonging. It wasn’t my parents’ music. It was the first music that I actually loved to listen to because I could get lost in it. Will come to certain things that my love for the Monkees and the Carpenters are linked directly to my mother, and things later in life would lead me to the Beatles and a whole ’60s rock, you know, regurgitation of expanding my mind to explore different themes and different ways of expression. And liking music. And we’ll get down later to why I think Punk and heavy metal are just a great way to exert your angst into working out and creating the best playlists. But I always found my way back to New Wave as a form of comfort.

If you grew up in Canada, you may have seen advertisements on TV for Ktel’s compilation records. And one of the first cassette tapes I pretty much ever owned, that wasn’t a Disney story or Sharon Lois and Bram, was a K-tel compilation album called the Mini Pops. A whole bunch of kids just singing popular songs of the day, but a lot of them were New Wave hits. Some not, but the bulk of them were songs like “Abracadabra,” “Betty Davis Eyes,” “Kids in America,” “Don’t You Want Me,” and “Mickey,” just to name a few. I wore that tape out, but at that point in time, I wasn’t allowed to touch my dad’s records, so I gave him that and it was probably the only time I did that.

There are so many bands under the New Wave moniker that it’s hard to pick just a couple to say these are my favorites, these are the best songs from these artists. You even had New Wave bands breaking up and making other New Wave bands. Take an example: The Beat or The English Beat if you lived in North America like I do. They were a ska band from England but ended up breaking up and in that break-up, you got two new bands in General Public and The Fine Young Cannibals, both of which would do great in the ’80s under a New Wave monitor. You got the first band to introduce us to Billy Idol in the quite amazingly named Generation X. You would get bands like Spandau Ballet who gave us probably one of the best, in my opinion, wedding ballads in the song “True,” and bands like ABC where their music would cross from New Wave into more of a pop feel, going from “Broken Arrow” to “When Smokey Sings.” You had the band that brought us the first-ever music video on MTV, The Buggles, with “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and bands like Berlin that would end up giving to another soundtrack later in the ’80s, “Take My Breath Away” from the Top Gun soundtrack. I didn’t know but every girl in elementary school that didn’t like that song.

Out of this, you also got some bands that would go on to do greater things both together and apart. I think about the Eurythmics that gave us Annie, the great Annie Lennox. Not to say Dave Stewart doesn’t hold his own, but I also don’t think he sings all that much so yeah. And also bands like The Cars that had a particular style to them with their sort of semi-matching suits and the very thin ties. Never owned one, would kind of, wouldn’t mind one. So if anyone’s looking for a Christmas gift this year. And then probably one of the second greatest bands to come out of the laying down under, okay, there’s more than just two, but there’s actually two in this category talking about INXS and Men At Work.

I would bet, as you’ve been reading this, you’ve heard the songs in your head or if I just said the band name you have an idea or song came to you so it’s not as much of an underground movement as it started but it’s become a lot more mainstream. There are, of course, bands that are synonymous with this genre and you can sort of take them for granted because they exploded as much as they did, bands like The Cure and of course Depeche Mode, my favorite band in this entire genre. I do not believe in my own opinion that Depeche Mode I’ve ever written a bad song or at least if they have I haven’t come across it but they have endured from the early ’80s all the way up until 2024. Just as an aside, when I said Depeche Mode “Personal Jesus” play in your head ‘cause if it did you and I can be friends.

I would never call myself a misfit, although great band but I would say I was strange. I was that guy sitting by himself in the gym watching everyone at the school dance, enjoying the music as it played even if it wasn’t New Wave, I still enjoyed the music. And the older I got and then went back to look at all of these movies from the ’80s and all of these soundtracks that basically gave me some of the best music that I could relate to, it’s sort of always been with me. Also admitting that I was like five and six when I started to learn about these bands and listen to their songs because they were on the radio, wasn’t until later that I found the deeper meanings and of course, you know, that’s to be expected. But the lifeblood of New Wave, I think, has always been there sort of just giving me that out that I need to let loose, dance with myself.

I’ll give you the top five of my favorite New Wave songs in reverse order:

Number five: “Blue Monday” by New Order. New Order being a band that came out of a punk band after the suicide of their lead singer. I enjoy this song for its dancy nature and depressive lyrics.

Number four: “The Cure - Pictures of You.” Not one of their mainstream popular songs but a song that almost a lot of people can relate to because when you look at pictures, you’re looking into the past and a lot of times people change, drift apart, so it always sticks with me that I can look at those pictures and have fun memories.

Number three: “Erasure - Chains of Love.” A song that can be heard pretty much at almost any Pride Parade. It allows me to feel that even when I question my own personal sexuality, that it didn’t matter and that we needed to unchain ourselves and be who we are, which quite literally is pretty much what New Wave is, is an unchaining of ourselves to be who we are.

Number two: “Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls.” An amazing dance tune but when you really get down into the lyrics, the story that is told, you can kind of see the almost Broadway-ass show like West Side Story, kind of the separation of classes and people and the intermingling of things.

And number one: “Depeche Mode - Stripped.” I know a lot of you are going, “Really? It wasn’t ‘Personal Jesus’ or ‘Enjoy the Silence’?” Nope, “Stripped.” “Never Let Me Down Again” was going to be a very close second but “Stripped” in its lyrics, wanting to see you stripped down to the bone, it’s a letting go of oneself or even just loving something so close that you want to strip away the layers and get to the gooey parts underneath. Kind of a goofy way of putting that song but as we all know, this is how my mind works.

Those are my top five, there are tons more just with even those bands themselves. You can get into a lot of really great music. So where does that leave us? Well, I gave you a little bit of a skimming the surface look at New Wave and sort of why I like it. Is it the be-all-end-all? No. Do I think you should look into some of it and maybe you’ll find a band in there or just even find a song that you know you haven’t heard in a long time and it just really gets you down and dance? There’s a lot of it there for you. I do have and I will link it down below, a playlist on Spotify called “Dark Matter” and it is a decent playlist if I say so myself of New Wave music. I hope you give it a listen and I hope it takes you somewhere, whether that be to the couch, a nice chair, or the dance floor, just as long as you enjoy it. And until next time, remember to sow the seeds of love and in the most part everyone wants to rule the world.

[Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash]