04NEW WAVE & COLLEGE ROCK
Punk's melodic aftermath — synthesizers, jangle guitars and songwriting aimed at radio
WHAT IT IS / WHEN
New wave is what happened when punk's energy met people who could actually play and wanted a hit. By 1982 the term covered synth-pop, jangle guitar bands and the entire first generation of MTV. American college radio ran a parallel track — R.E.M., the Pixies, the Smiths' UK equivalent — that stayed off the mainstream charts and eventually produced everything called alternative in the 1990s.
SIGNIFICANT ARTISTS
Tears For Fears, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, The Human League and Cyndi Lauper on the pop side; The Smiths, R.E.M. and the Pixies on the college-radio side; Germany's Sandra and Sweden's later revivalists represent the continental version.
TRIVIA
The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" was written after Black Francis went scuba diving in the Caribbean and had a fish follow him around; it has since scored more films about mental collapse than any other song of its era. Tears For Fears took their name and much of their early lyrical material from Arthur Janov's primal therapy, which they had both undergone — "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is the point where they stopped writing about it and got a number one.
SONIC SIGNATURE
Bright, chorused guitars playing arpeggios rather than chords; melodic bass well forward; gated snare with a short bright plate; and a synth pad filling everything between. Songs are short, the chorus arrives early, and harmony stays major-key and diatonic with one surprising borrowed chord — usually in the pre-chorus.
KEY GEAR
Rickenbacker 330 and Fender Telecaster into Roland JC-120 chorus amps; Yamaha DX7, Roland Juno-106 and Oberheim OB-X for pads and bell tones; LinnDrum and Simmons pads layered under acoustic kits; and the era's signature — an AMS or Lexicon gated reverb on the snare.
RATIONALE & PRODUCTION
Recorded to 24-track analogue with gates keyed to the snare, guitars double-tracked and hard-panned, and the vocal compressed hard so it floats above a dense bed. The mix leaves a deliberate notch at 2–4 kHz for the voice. These masters are relatively quiet by modern standards, which is why 1980s reissues so often sound better than the loudness-war remasters that replaced them.
TRACKS IN THIS GENRE
Each control plays a ten-second excerpt of the track, taken from its catalogue preview clip.
- Everybody Wants To Rule The WorldTears For Fears
- I Know It's Over - 2011 RemasterThe Smiths
- Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want - 2011 RemasterThe Smiths
- Gold - 2003 RemasterSpandau Ballet
- Losing My ReligionR.E.M.
- Where Is My Mind? - 2007 RemasterPixies
- Everything's Coming Up RosesBlack
- In The Heat Of The NightSandra
- Time After TimeCyndi Lauper
- Fever FeverMelody Club
- Spent the Day in BedMorrissey