New pop

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New pop is a loosely defined British-centric pop music movement consisting of ambitious, DIY-minded artists who achieved commercial success in the early 1980s through sources such as MTV. Rooted in the post-punk movement of the late 1970s, the movement spanned a wide variety of styles and artists, including acts such as Orange Juice, the Human League, and ABC. The term "rockist", a pejorative against people who shunned this type of music, [4] [5] coincided with and was associated with new pop. [2]

Contents

"New music" is a roughly equivalent but slightly more expansive umbrella term [6] for a pop music and cultural phenomenon in the US associated with the Second British Invasion. [7] [8] The term was used by the music industry and by American music journalists during the 1980s to characterize then-new movements like new pop and New Romanticism. [9]

Characteristics

Many new pop artists created music that sweetened less commercial and experimental aspects with a pop coating. [2] Entryism became a popular concept for groups at the time. [2] New Music acts were danceable, had an androgynous look, emphasized the synthesizer and drum machines, wrote about the darker side of romance, and were British. They rediscovered rockabilly, Motown, ska, reggae and merged it with African rhythms to produce what was described as a "fertile, stylistic cross-pollination". [7] Author Simon Reynolds noted that the new pop movement "involved a conscious and brave attempt to bridge the separation between 'progressive' pop and mass/chart pop – a divide which has existed since 1967, and is also, broadly, one between boys and girls, middle-class and working-class." [1]

The terms "new music" or "new pop" were used loosely to describe synth-pop groups such as the Human League, soul-disco acts such as ABC, new wave acts such as Elvis Costello and the Pretenders, [6] jangle pop bands such as Orange Juice, [2] and American MTV stars such as Michael Jackson. [8] Stephen Holden of the New York Times wrote at the time that New Music was more about its practitioners than their sound. Teenage girls and males that had grown tired of traditional "phallic" guitar driven rock embraced New Music. [10] New Music was a singles oriented (both 7 inch and the then new 12 inch) phenomenon, reverting the 1970s rock music album orientation. [11]

Etymology

During the late 1970s, "New Musick" [ sic ] was one of the labels that was applied to certain post-punk groups. [12] The term "post-punk" was also deployed interchangeably with "new wave". [13] In the New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock (2001), "new wave" is described as a "virtually meaningless" term. [14] By the early 1980s, British journalists had largely abandoned "new wave" in favor of other terms such as "synthpop", [15] and in 1983, the term of choice for the US music industry had become "new music". [16]

History

Producer and New Musical Express writer Paul Morley (left), a pivotal figure in new pop Christopher Austin Paul Morley.jpg
Producer and New Musical Express writer Paul Morley (left), a pivotal figure in new pop

In the wake of the punk rock explosion of the late 1970s, the new wave and post-punk genres emerged, informed by a desire for experimentation, creativity and forward movement. Music journalist Paul Morley, whose writing in British music magazine the NME championed the post-punk movement in late 1970s, has been credited as an influential voice in the development of new pop following the dissipation of post-punk, advocating "overground brightness" over underground sensibilities. [2] Around this time, the term "rockist" would gain popularity to disparagingly describe music that privileged traditionalist rock styles. [2] According to Pitchfork 's Jess Harvel: "If new pop had an architect, it was [the writer] Paul Morley." [2]

As the 1980s began, a number of musicians desired to broaden these movements to reach a more mainstream audience. In 1980, the New Music Seminar made its debut. It was designed to help young new wave artists gain entrance into the American music industry. The event grew rapidly in popularity and encouraged the shift away from the use of "new wave" to "New Music" in the United States. [17] Unlike in Great Britain, attempts prior to 1982 to bring new wave and the music video to American audiences had brought mixed results. During 1982, New Music acts began to appear on the charts in the United States, and clubs there that played them were packed. [7]

"I hated the phrase 'new wave'. It sounded too trendy and could be gone in a year"

—Dennis McNamara, program director who oversaw Long Island, New York radio station WLIR's 1982 change to a New Music format. [18]

In reaction to New Music, album-oriented rock radio stations doubled the amount of new acts they played and the format "Hot Hits" emerged. [7] By 1983, in a year when half of the new artists came out of New Music, [19] acts such as Duran Duran, Culture Club and Men at Work were dominating the charts and creating an alternate music and cultural mainstream. [7] Annie Lennox [20] and Boy George were the two figures most associated with New Music. [8] [21]

In an interview with CBS News discussing the Second British Invasion of New Pop acts in America in 1983, singer Martin Fry of ABC described it as "an explosion that came out after punk rock swung through Britain – a whole generation that was kind of interested in making music that was more polished. That obviously led to a golden age with Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, the Human League, ABC, Depeche Mode, many bands like that. We were all a little bit flamboyant." [22]

Criticism and decline

Criticism of new pop emerged from both supporters of traditional rock and newer experimental rock. These critics looked at new pop as pro corporate at expense of rock music's anti-authoritarian tradition. Critics believed new pop's embrace of synths and videos were ways of covering in many cases lack of talent. The heavy metal magazine Hit Parader regularly used the homophobic slur "faggot" to describe New Music musicians. The 1985 Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing", which hit number 1 in the United States, contained the line "The little faggot with the earring and the make-up" and used the term "faggot" several other times. [23] The lyrics were taken verbatim from the language of a New York appliance store worker whom lead singer Mark Knopfler had observed watching MTV. Assistant professor/author/musician Theo Cateforis stated these are examples of homophobia used in the defense of "real rock" against new music. [24] [25]

An American reaction against European synthpop and "haircut bands" has been seen as beginning in the mid-1980s with the rise of heartland rock and roots rock. [26] Richard Blade, a disc jockey at Los Angeles radio station KROQ-FM, speaking of the late 1980s said, "You felt there was a winding-down of music. Thomas Dolby's album had bombed, Duran Duran had gone through a series of breakups, the Smiths had broken up, Spandau Ballet had gone away, and people were just shaking their heads going, 'What happened to all this new music?' " [27] Theo Cateforis contends that the New Music evolved into modern rock that while different, retained New Music's uptempo feel and still came from the rock disco/club scene. [28] In the UK, indie bands adopted "the kind of jangling guitar work that had typified New Wave music", [29] with the arrival of the Smiths characterised by the music press as a "reaction against the opulence/corpulence of nouveau rich New Pop" and a "return to a different vision of 'new pop', the Postcard ideal." [30]

Related Research Articles

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Synth-pop is a music genre that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic, art rock, disco, and particularly the Krautrock of bands like Kraftwerk. It arose as a distinct genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late 1970s.

Alternative rock is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s with the likes of the grunge, shoegaze, and Britpop subgenres in the United States and United Kingdom, respectively. During this period, many record labels were looking for "alternatives", as many corporate rock, hard rock, and glam metal acts from the 1980s were beginning to grow stale throughout the music industry. The emergence of Generation X as a cultural force in the 1990s also contributed greatly to the rise of alternative rock.

Power pop is a subgenre of rock music and a form of pop rock based on the early music of bands such as the Who, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Byrds. It typically incorporates melodic hooks, vocal harmonies, an energetic performance, and cheerful-sounding music underpinned by a sense of yearning, longing, despair, or self-empowerment. The sound is primarily rooted in pop and rock traditions of the early-to-mid 1960s, although some artists have occasionally drawn from later styles such as punk, new wave, glam rock, pub rock, college rock, and neo-psychedelia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Romantic</span> 1970s popular culture movement originating in the UK

New Romantic was an underground subculture movement that originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The movement emerged from the nightclub scene in London and Birmingham at venues such as Billy's and The Blitz. The New Romantic movement was characterised by flamboyant, eccentric fashion inspired by fashion boutiques such as Kahn and Bell in Birmingham and PX in London. Early adherents of the movement were often referred to by the press by such names as Blitz Kids, New Dandies and Romantic Rebels.

Popular music of the United Kingdom in the 1970s built upon the new forms of music developed from blues rock towards the end of the 1960s, including folk rock and psychedelic rock movements. Several important and influential subgenres were created in Britain in this period, by pursuing the limitations of rock music, including British folk rock and glam rock, a process that reached its apogee in the development of progressive rock and one of the most enduring subgenres in heavy metal music. Britain also began to be increasingly influenced by third world music, including Jamaican and Indian music, resulting in new music scenes and subgenres. In the middle years of the decade the influence of the pub rock and American punk rock movements led to the British intensification of punk, which swept away much of the existing landscape of popular music, replacing it with much more diverse new wave and post punk bands who mixed different forms of music and influences to dominate rock and pop music into the 1980s.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rockism and poptimism</span> Ideological arguments in music journalism

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This article includes an overview of the famous events and trends in popular music in the 1980s.

British pop music is popular music, produced commercially in the United Kingdom. It emerged in the mid-to late 1950s as a softer alternative to American rock 'n' roll. Like American pop music it has a focus on commercial recording, often orientated towards a youth market, as well as that of the Singles Chart usually through the medium of relatively short and simple love songs. While these basic elements of the genre have remained fairly constant, pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, particularly borrowing from the development of rock music, and utilising key technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. From the British Invasion in the 1960s, led by The Beatles, British pop music has alternated between acts and genres with national appeal and those with international success that have had a considerable impact on the development of the wider genre and on popular music in general

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Second British Invasion</span> Early-to-mid-1980s music cultural movement

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Reynolds 2006, p. 398.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Harvel, Jess. "Now That's What I Call New Pop!". Pitchfork Media . 12 September 2005.
  3. ↑ Christgau, Robert (1990). "Postpunk-Postdisco Fusion". Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s. Pantheon Books. ISBN   0-679-73015-X.
  4. ↑ "Embarrassment Rock". Pitchfork.com. 20 February 2012. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  5. ↑ "Rockism - it's the new rockism". The Guardian . 25 May 2006. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  6. 1 2 Reynolds 2005, p. 338.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 "The Michigan Daily - Google News Archive Search". News.google.com. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  8. 1 2 3 Denisoff, R. Serge (1 January 1986). Tarnished Gold: The Record Industry Revisted [i.e. Revisited]. Transaction Publishers. ISBN   9781412835565 . Retrieved 3 September 2020– via Google Books.
  9. ↑ Cateforis 2011, pp. 12, 56.
  10. ↑ Reynolds 2005, p. 308.
  11. ↑ Cateforis 2011, pp. 56–57.
  12. ↑ Cateforis 2011, p. 26.
  13. ↑ Jackson, Josh (8 September 2016). "The 50 Best New Wave Albums". Paste .
  14. ↑ Cateforis 2011, p. 11.
  15. ↑ Cateforis 2011, p. 254.
  16. ↑ Cateforis 2011 , p. 56
  17. ↑ Cateforis pp. 43-44
  18. ↑ WLIR, Denis McNamara ushered a wave of new music, Newsday , November 13, 2010
  19. ↑ Cateforis p. 57
  20. ↑ Reynolds 2005, p. 342.
  21. ↑ Reynolds 2005, p. 258.
  22. ↑ Chiu, David. "A look back at 1983: The year of the second British Invasion". CBS News. CBS Interactive Inc. Retrieved 19 March 2022.
  23. ↑ Dire Straits - Money for Nothing (Official Audio) - RHINO on YouTube
  24. ↑ "CANADIAN BROADCAST STANDARDS COUNCIL,ad hoc NATIONAL PANEL,Review of the Atlantic Regional Panel decision in CHOZ-FM re the song "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits". Archived from the original on 10 August 2014. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  25. ↑ Cateforis p. 233 reference number 28
  26. ↑ Reynolds, p. 535
  27. ↑ "KROQ: an oral history by Kate Sullivan - Los Angeles Magazine November 2001". Radiohitlist.com. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  28. ↑ Cateforis pp. 65-67
  29. ↑ Nickson, Chris (25 September 2012). "Indie and the New Musical Express". ministryofrock.co.uk. Retrieved 13 February 2024.
  30. ↑ Reynolds, Simon (26 September 1987). "The Smiths: A Eulogy". Bring the Noise: 20 Years of Writing About Hip Rock and Hip Hop. Catapult. ISBN   978-1-59376-460-9.

Bibliography

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