New Wave

The longest-lived sub-genre of music. New Wave's roots can be traced back to 1969, when David Bowie first released the song "Space Oddity". In 1973, when Bowie re-released "Space Oddity", the precursor to New Wave, punk rock was born. Throughout the mid-1970's, Punk bands such as The Ramones, Siouxsie & the Banshees, the Sex Pistols and The Clash were discovered. During the disco backlash of 1979 and 1980, Punk rose to the forefront, while other bands like Blondie, Talking Heads, R.E.M., U2 and Devo began what would become the initial New Wave movement, which was capped off in 1981 when Billy Joel mentioned New Wave in the song "It's Still Rock & Roll to Me". During the early 1980's, there was a lot of band evolution taking place, as Bauhaus broke up, reformed as Tones on Tail, then reformed as Love and Rockets, while Mick Jones of The Clash formed Big Audio Dynamite, The Sex Gang Children split in half and became Culture Club, Vince Clarke, formerly of Depeche Mode, formed Yaz and then Erasure, and The English Beat split into bands such as Style Council, Modern English and Fine Young Cannibals. It was during this time, in 1983 and 1984 that New Wave grew to encompass such pop music acts as Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, David Bowie ((who created New Wave to begin with)), Duran Duran and even Huey Lewis & The News. In 1985, New Wave was at it's first peak, as bands such as Tears For Fears, U2, INXS, Berlin and Simple Minds were having hits songs everywhere. In 1986, however, New Wave encountered it's first lull, as hair bands, Genesis and Michael Jackson became hot. The next year, 1987, though, belonged to New Wave as Genesis hit on a New Wave staple: The war song. Bands such as R.E.M., Mike + The Mechanics, Big Audio Dynamite and Love & Rockets followed suit, all having hits dealing with the topic of World War 3. From 1988 to 1992, New Wave shared the spotlight with hair bands, until grunge killed both genres. In 1993, however, New Wave surprisingly resurfaced as Duran Duran, U2 and The Cure all had comeback hits. Throughout the 1990's and early 2000's, the stage was being set for a New Wave revival, which culminated in 2005 with the return of bands like New Order, Depeche Mode, Blondie, The New Cars, Duran Duran, U2, Queen and many others.

There are too many examples of New Wave to list. Some of then are: Fusco (a fusing of funk and Disco that survived the Disco Backlash), New New Wave (The New Wave revival of 2006), the war songs of 1983 and 1987, Pop Wave (during the mid-80's when pop acts like Madonna, Prince and Cyndi Lauper were considered New Wave) and Punk Wave (the predecessor of New Wave, from 1978 to 1981).

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