Forerunners The Velvet Underground have been heralded for their influence on new wave. The
glam and
art rock inspired style of
Roxy Music and
Sparks were also influential to the genre alongside the works of
David Bowie,
Iggy Pop and
Brian Eno. The work of
experimental rock artists such as
Captain Beefheart,
Frank Zappa, and
the Residents, underground
psychedelic bands
Lothar and the Hand People as well as Germany's
krautrock and
electronic-based
kosmische musik scene, particularly the work of
Kraftwerk, have been described as influencing or presaging the movement. The influence of
avant-garde and
abstract art movements such as
Dada,
Cubism and the
Bauhaus school would also influence the visual aesthetic and sound of new wave artists, which became contemporaneous with the development of the
Memphis Design aesthetic adopted by
MTV and many new wave artists during the 1980s. Additionally,
Peter Ivers' early output was later recognized as a precursor to new wave with Ivers contributing to the
Eraserhead soundtrack and later hosting the influential show
New Wave Theatre which helped popularize many early Californian new wave acts.
1970s Origins performing in
Toronto in 1978 As early as 1973, critics including
Nick Kent and
Dave Marsh were using the term "new wave" to classify New York–based groups such as
the Velvet Underground and
New York Dolls. In the US, many of the first new wave groups were found in the early
New York punk scene, with acts such as
Milk 'N' Cookies,
the Shirts,
Mumps,
Talking Heads,
Mink DeVille, and
Blondie who drew influences from
glam,
art rock, and
power pop and were primarily associated with the
CBGB scene. Alongside
Devo and
Pere Ubu who emerged out of the early
Ohio punk scene, followed by
Ultravox in London. Some influential bands, such as New York's
Suicide and Boston's
the Modern Lovers debuted even earlier, with drummer
David Robinson later joining early new wave band
the Cars. CBGB owner
Hilly Kristal, referring to the first show by
Television at his club in March 1974, said; "I think of that as the beginning of new wave". Between 1976 and 1977, the terms "new wave" and "punk" were used somewhat interchangeably. That year, the term gained currency when it appeared in UK punk
fanzines such as ''
Sniffin' Glue, and music weeklies such as Melody Maker and New Musical Express''. In November 1976,
Caroline Coon used the term "new wave" to designate music by bands that were not exactly
punk but were related to the punk-music scene. The mid-1970s British
pub rock scene became another source of many of the most-commercially-successful new wave acts, such as
Ian Dury and
Nick Lowe, as well as Ireland's
Boomtown Rats. In the US,
Sire Records chairman
Seymour Stein, believing the term "punk" would mean poor sales for Sire's acts who had frequently played the New York club
CBGB, launched a "Don't Call It Punk" campaign in October 1977 in order to replace the term with "new wave".
The New York Rocker, which was suspicious of the term "punk", had been using the term "new wave" since December 1976 and was the first American journal to enthusiastically use the term, at first for British acts and later for acts associated with the CBGB scene. The music's stripped-back style and upbeat tempos, which Stein and others viewed as a much-needed return to the energetic rush of rock and roll and 1960s rock that had dwindled in the 1970s with
progressive rock and stadium spectacles, attracted them to new wave. In England, the terms "
post-punk" and "
new musick" were popularized and coined by
Sounds magazine, with music journalists Jane Suck and
Jon Savage publishing editorials in the November 26, 1977 issue of
Sounds entitled "New Musick" to describe a strain of bands that were moving past the
garage rock conventions of punk rock and incorporating wider influences. The terms "post-punk" and "new wave" were used interchangeably to describe these groups before the genres perceptibly narrowed, some artists adopted synthesizers. In London, artists such as Ultravox,
Elvis Costello and
Gary Numan's
Tubeway Army later released influential new wave albums during this period. While punk rock wielded a major influence on the popular music scene in the UK, in the US it remained a fixture of the underground. In October 1978, the Cars released the single "
My Best Friend's Girl" which was one of the first new wave singles to enter the Top 40 peaking at number 35 on the U.S.
Billboard Hot 100 chart, and reaching number three in the UK. In January 1979, Blondie released "
Heart of Glass" which became the first new wave single to reach number 1 on the US
Billboard Hot 100 and the
UK Singles Chart. This success was followed by other new wave hits including
M's "
Pop Muzik",
Tubeway Army's "
Are 'Friends' Electric?",
the Police's "
Roxanne" and "
Message in a Bottle",
Gary Numan's "
Cars", and
the Knack's "
Good Girls Don't".
1980s In the early 1980s, new wave gradually lost its associations with punk in popular perception among some Americans. Writing in 1989, music critic Bill Flanagan said; "Bit by bit the last traces of Punk were drained from New Wave, as New Wave went from meaning Talking Heads to meaning the Cars to
Squeeze to
Duran Duran to, finally,
Wham!". Among many critics, however, new wave remained tied to the punk/new wave period of the late 1970s. Writing in 1990, the "Dean of American Rock Critics"
Robert Christgau, who gave punk and new wave bands major coverage in his column for
The Village Voice in the late 1970s, defined "new wave" as "a polite term devised to reassure people who were scared by punk, it enjoyed a two- or three-year run but was falling from favor as the '80s began."
Lester Bangs, another critical promoter of punk and new wave in the 1970s, when asked if new wave was "still going on" in 1982, stated that "The only trouble with New Wave is that nobody followed up on it ... But it was really an exciting burst there for like a year, year and a half." Starting around 1983, the US music industry preferred the more generic term "
new music", which it used to categorize new movements like
new pop and
New Romanticism. In 1983, music journalist Parke Puterbaugh wrote that new music "does not so much describe a single style as it draws a line in time, distinguishing what came before from what has come after."
Chuck Eddy, who wrote for
The Village Voice in the 1980s, said in a 2011 interview that by the time of British new pop acts' popularity on MTV, "New Wave had already been over by then. New wave was not synth music; it wasn't even this sort of funny-haircut music. It was the guy in
the Boomtown Rats wearing pajamas." Similarly in Britain, journalists and music critics largely abandoned the term "new wave" with the rise of synth-pop. According to authors Stuart Borthwick and Ron Moy, "After the monochrome blacks and greys of punk/new wave, synth-pop was promoted by a youth media interested in people who wanted to be pop stars, such as
Boy George and
Adam Ant". In 2005,
Andrew Collins of
The Guardian offered the breakup of
the Jam, and the formation of Duran Duran, as two possible dates marking the "death" of new wave. British rock critic
Adam Sweeting, who described the Jam as "British New Wave at its most quintessential and successful", remarked that the band broke up "just as
British pop was being overrun by the preposterous leisurewear and over-budgeted videos of
Culture Club, Duran Duran and
ABC, all of which were anathema to the puritanical
Weller." Scholar Russ Bestley noted that while punk, new wave, and post-punk songs had featured on the
Top of the Pops album series between mid-1977 and early 1982, by the time of the first ''
Now That's What I Call Music!'' compilation in 1983 punk and new wave was "largely dead and buried as a commercial force". New wave was closely tied to punk, and came and went more quickly in the UK and Western Europe than in the US. At the time punk began, it was a major phenomenon in the UK and a minor one in the US. When new wave acts started being noticed in the US, the term "punk" meant little to mainstream audiences, and it was common for rock clubs and discos to play British dance mixes and videos between live sets by American guitar acts. Illustrating the varied meanings of "new wave" in the UK and the US, Collins recalled how growing up in the 1970s he considered
the Photos, who released one album in 1980 before splitting up a year later, as the most "truly definitive new wave band". In the same article, reviewing the American book ''This Ain't No Disco: New Wave Album Covers'', Collins noted that the book's inclusion of such artists as
Big Country, Roxy Music, Wham!, and
Bronski Beat "strikes an Englishman as patently ridiculous", but that the term means "all things to all cultural commentators." By the 2000s, critical consensus favored "new wave" to be an umbrella term that encompasses
power pop, synth-pop,
ska revival, and the soft strains of punk rock. In the UK, some post-punk music developments became mainstream. According to music critic David Smay writing in 2001: ==Popularity in the United States (1970s–1980s)==