If ever there was a category, genre or nomenclature invented to describe a musical style, intention or period that was utterly anomalous, it would be New Wave. Now, don't get me wrong, the concept of something being New Wave in the sense of “La Nouvelle Vague” describing French cinema of the 1950s and 60s is certainly a valid approach, but its adoption by the music press as a way to attempt to encapsulate a massive and diverse transitional movement in popular music is at best laziness and at worst completely dysfunctional.

However, after taking a deep breath and allowing myself to soak in the lack of definition for a while, what emerges is an amazingly eclectic playlist that showcases some nuanced and unassuming breakthroughs of popular culture that set up an extraordinary decade of music that still echoes through the music we listen to today.

New Wave wasn't a shockwave: Punk was a shockwave, HipHop was a shockwave, whereas New Wave popped up and quietly shuffled its way into our consciousness. It tugged on nostalgia, leaned into nervous quirks, undermined machismo, giggled at punk's fury and subverted prog rock's pretentiousness. It was sarcastic and cynical but silly and effortlessly cool. New Wave poked at the emergence of a hundred new genres with a bubbling over of new ideas that fed into dozens and dozens of bands that pulled in different directions and defied a definition that the music industry so badly needed to find. So, while there's no definitive answer to the New Wave question, there's much we can discuss and touch upon.

There are many articles out there trying to nail down New Wave for our benefit but few of them agree on very much. Simple things like when it started, who was involved and when it ended are all over the place. Probably the most well-thought-out and comprehensive is the Wikipedia entry, but even that frequently contradicts itself and takes you places you really don’t need to go.

So, for my part, I will attempt to offer a view from my perspective as someone who grew up in the 70s and 80s and experienced the shift that the New Wave took from one cultural movement into many. It wasn't something you really worried about as you were too busy dancing.

How Did We Get Here?

Probably the most important musical shift in the mid-1970s was the arrival of punk. The rock 'n' roll scene had descended into the self-absorbed realms of meandering guitar solos, epic soundtracks and emotional ballads. Progressive rock had lost any sense of impact, rebellion, and meaning and instead busied itself with celebrating how musically brilliant it was. Glam rock was fun but rather ludicrous and the bands took themselves far too seriously. The hippies of the last decade had lost many of their icons and had found some refuge in the folk scene. Meanwhile, Disco quietly got on with its own thing. Politically and socially, the 1970s were a difficult decade. None of the revolutionary vibe of the 1960s seemed to stick around, and we were left with pompous musicians who would rather noodle along on an adventure ride to Mars than sing about anything important.

That is what gave us punk. It was an inevitable overflowing of raw emotion that picked up the tools of prog rock and smashed them on the floor. Punk disrespected the music, disrespected the business and disrespected the audience and it was pure bloody brilliant. It was a release of angry, maladjusted energy that laughed at the status quo and put their fingers up at the establishment. Music was visceral, alive and wild again, but it also wasn't very good. The impact of bands like the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the Clash was huge, but they weren't exactly admired for their virtuosic talents. However, waiting in the wings were a whole new generation of bored musicians who needed a push and an opportunity.

The term "New Wave" had already been bandied around in the press in response to middle America's fear of the evils of "punk". Punk rock was seen as dangerous, violent and anarchic, and this made it difficult to book bands or sell records and radio plays in the more conservative States. Seymour Stein of Sire Records was reportedly the first person to actively use the term with his "Don't Call It Punk" campaign, which was then picked up by the music press. So in the mid 70s, New Wave was being used as a softer alternative term to punk, but it had nothing to do with a change in musical style.

However, the term solidified around one band that came closest to defining it as a sound. Sire Records represented the Ramones, but they'd also taken on a weirder, more musically diverse band, which, by 1977, was gathering quite a following. That band was Talking Heads. Headed up by the nervously nerdy David Byrne, Talking Heads were nothing like a punk band. They had a similar amount of energy but it was directed into a quirkiness that spoke a very different language. Their music was full of diverse influences, ethnic rhythms, poetry, jazz, theatre, strange ticks and experimental musicality while being infused with a lightness and laughter of absurd self-awareness. This is the essence of what New Wave became.

The music was still edgy enough to be rolled into the punk genre for a while before it began to attach itself to other up-and-coming bands that increasingly distanced itself from its punk roots. Blondie came out of the same scene, reflecting the leather jackets of the Ramones but with an unmistakable female lead and the ability to feed off a wide array of influences from ska to funk and disco. David Byrne's nerdy persona was matched by Elvis Costello and the Attractions who were pulling in some rockabilly vibes to rub against his unusual delivery. The Police sought out the social conscience of reggae and ska influences to match their artistic take on punk music.

The USA and Britain had similar low-burn revolutions going on but with some very different approaches. The USA fed on its back catalog of surf and rock 'n' roll with bands like the B-52s and The Cars, sticking to a more guitar-led form, whereas in the UK, bands like Gary Numan, Eurythmics and Soft Cell leaned heavily into the synthesizer. Although this, of course, is a sweeping generalization to which the synth-led US band Devo would have something to say, as would the UK guitar bands The Jam and Bow Wow Wow. But as a listener at the start of the 1980s, I found it to be just a fabulous mix of eclectic music. You didn't have to join a tribe to enjoy it; there were no mods or rockers, hippies or punks, guitars or synths; it was all just great music.

Narrowing in on a Definition

Many modern commentators make the mistake of labeling any new band of the 70s/80s decade switch-over as New Wave. Whereas if you were in the thick of it, it was particular; it captured something unique about the flavor of not just the music but the whole attitude and approach. It wasn't easily definable, but you could feel it. So, the Police were New Wave, but Simple Minds certainly were not; they were a rock band, as were U2, and there's nothing wrong with that. New Wave had a fresh feel, was light, and quirky, with a mix of influences and none of the dour moodiness or machismo of rock music. It was very queer-positive; it borrowed from glam rock, Bowie, and Parliament-Funkadelic and could embrace Latin and African rhythms, but, of course, not always. Some people consider Bowie to be the godfather of New Wave but Bowie, like Roxy Music, had been around for too long to be "new" anything. There was also a sense of positivity as we came out of the 1970s into a new and yet differently hopeful age. It wasn't the hope of peace and unity of the hippies; it was the unity of commercialism and the hope of more money and more stuff. This twist is social cohesion helped create a slight sense of unreality that allowed the creativity in these bands to flourish.

There's a hilarious list of New Wave artists on Wikipedia that completely fails to grasp the active intentions behind it, as well as the timescale, reaching far too far into the 80s.

To pull out a selection:

• Adam and the Ants: oh yes, totally.
• The Alarm: no, they're a rock band, obviously.
• Toni Basil: Oh yes, she's so fine she blows my mind.
• Buzzcocks: no, they were proper punk.
• Ian Dury: yes, undoubtedly.
• Dead or Alive: no, far too late, that's Stock Aiken and Waterman for heaven's sake!
• Duran Duran: yes, up to a point.
• OMD: yes, up to a point…
• Sigue Sigue Sputnik: what are you talking about?
• Flock of Seagulls: yes.
• Frankie Goes to Hollywood: no, while they benefitted from New Wave icon Trevor Horn's production they were far too late to be part of the movement.
• Joe Jackson: yes.
• INXS: I don't think so, but Men at Work probably were.
• Nena: yes, by a whisker with a late entry for 99 Luftballoons, as were Falco.
• Joy Division and New Order: Yes—and no—for reasons I'll come to.
• Ultravox: yes.
• Pet Shop Boys: Certainly not.

Plenty of borderline acts like the Boomtown Rats, The Pretenders, and Psychedelic Furs were rock bands with a good level of New Wave flavor but somehow didn’t always fit the mold.

New Wave probably hit its high in 1981 with the arrival of MTV. It kicked off with Trevor Horn’s Buggles and the aptly named "Video Killed the Radio Star," possibly the most New Wave of all New Wave tracks. It's fascinating to browse the first 100 videos shown on MTV. It reminds you that a wide range of music was made in the 1980s; there wasn’t just one thing. Rod Stewart, who no one could accuse of being New Wave, appears far too many times. Iron Maiden is on twice, and bands like The Who, Rainbow and REO Speedwagon proudly represent the previous generation. For the New Wave we get Elvis Costello, Blondie, lots of Crissy Hynde's Pretenders, The Cars, Talking Heads, The Specials, and Kate Bush. MTV worked for New Wave acts because they tended to have a visual flair that translated well into fun and engaging promos that stood in welcome contrast to the preening self-importance of rock acts and crooners.

As the music machine gathered pace in the early 1980s, the music press frantically tried to redefine and categorize while new emerging scenes wanted to assert their own individuality. From this melting pot, we can pull the New Romantics, Synth-Pop, Post-punk, and Dark-Wave, all of whom could be considered New Wave if they weren’t so keen to discard the term. Examples of New Romantics include Duran Duran, Spandau, Culture Club, and Ultravox, whereas Synth-Pop took on Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, Yazoo, Human League and OMD. Post-punk ran concurrently with New Wave pulling in the darker elements that didn't fit the New Wave lightness in tone. The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees are great examples, and Joy Division and New Order tend to fall into this zone, as do Public Image Limited, Killing Joke and Nick Cave. Many of these bands picked up multiple labels as they flirted between genres, and old definitions became obsolete.

In November 1983, Virgin/EMI released a compilation album called Now That's What I Call Music and promptly, and probably unintentionally, announced that the New Wave was over. It was a hugely influential and defining musical event, and I still have my original copy on cassette. It featured all sorts of New Wave acts like Culture Club, Duran Duran, Heaven 17, Men at Work, Human League and The Cure, but it also pulled in old rockers like Genesis and big singers like Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack. It touched on disco with KC and the Sunshine Band, R & B with New Edition and showcased the new pop music of Kajagoogoo, Howard Jones and Paul Young. With a sprinkling of one-hit wonders and the Birmingham reggae of UB40, it could have been, in its lightness and diversity, the very definition of a New Wave album. Instead, it declared that all of these things, to quote Robin Scott's 1979 undoubtedly New Wave outfit M, were simply "Pop Muzik". Any suggestion that anything could be New Wave after this release is complete nonsense.

For me, New Wave describes an extraordinary transitional period between ponderous rock music and disposable pop music. Through the disruption of punk, the flowering of diversity, the embracing of nerdy quirks, the love of song and the excitement of new ideas came a prolifically creative period of musical output that sowed the seeds of pretty much every form of popular music since. While disposable pop may be one inevitable outcome, I believe the legacy of the New Wave and the reason why the music sticks around is that it continues to lead us into the manifestation of entirely new destinations. It's also important to acknowledge that such grand statements come from my white man's perspective and that whole swathes of music of black origin, like disco, soul, blues, and R&B, completely ignored the whole phenomenon.