Origins look, which was a major influence on the movement The New Romantic movement developed almost simultaneously in London and Birmingham. In London, it grew out of David Bowie and Roxy Music themed nights, run during 1978 in the nightclub
Billy's in
Dean Street, London. In 1979, the growing popularity of the club forced organisers
Steve Strange and
Rusty Egan to relocate to a larger venue in the Blitz, a wine bar in
Great Queen Street,
Covent Garden, where they ran a Tuesday night "Club for Heroes". The club spawned several spin-offs and there were soon clubs elsewhere in the capital and in other major British cities, including Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham. The video for David Bowie's 1980 UK number one single "
Ashes to Ashes" included appearances by Strange with three other Blitz Kids and propelled the New Romantic movement into the mainstream. whose elaborate and theatrical designs brought together futuristic visual elements and influences as diverse as Egyptian, African and Far Eastern art, and would largely define the movement's look. By 1977, a small scene featuring Jane Kahn and Patti Bell themselves,
Martin Degville,
Boy George and Patrick Lilley had emerged in pubs such as The Crown and clubs such as Romulus and Barbarella's.
Leeds also developed an early New Romantic scene around 1979, with clubs including the Warehouse, Primos and
Le Phonographique. This scene's most notable exponent was
Soft Cell, whose vocalist was the Warehouse's DJ and cloakroom worker
Marc Almond.
Styles of music Many bands that emerged from the New Romantic movement became closely associated with the use of synthesizers to create rock and pop music, which has led to the widespread misconception that synth-pop and the New Romantic movement were synonymous. Synth-pop was prefigured in the 1960s and 1970s by the use of synthesizers in
progressive rock,
electronic art rock,
disco, the "
Kraut rock" of bands like
Kraftwerk, the three albums made by Bowie with
Brian Eno in his "Berlin period", and
Yellow Magic Orchestra's early albums. After the breakthrough of
Tubeway Army and
Gary Numan in the
UK Singles Chart in 1979, large numbers of artists began to enjoy success with a synthesizer-based sound and they came to dominate the pop music of the early 1980s. Bands that emerged from the New Romantic scene and adopted synth-pop included
Duran Duran,
Visage, and
Spandau Ballet. According to authors Stuart Borthwick and Ron Moy, "After the monochrome blacks and greys of punk/new wave, synthpop was promoted by a youth media interested in people who wanted to be pop stars, such as
Boy George and
Adam Ant". Duran Duran, who emerged from the Birmingham scene, have been credited with incorporating a dance-orientated
rhythm section into synth-pop to produce a catchier and warmer sound, which provided them with a series of hit singles.
Adam and the Ants and
Bow Wow Wow used the African-influenced rhythms of the "
Burundi beat".
The second British invasion In the US, the cable music channel
MTV reached the media capitals of New York City and Los Angeles in 1982. Style-conscious New Romantic synthpop acts became a major staple of MTV programming. They would be followed by many acts over the next three years, with many of them employing synthpop sounds; in fact, Duran Duran's glossy videos symbolised the power of MTV and this
Second British Invasion. The switch to a "
new music" format in US radio stations was also significant in the success of British bands. came by invitation of
Jim Fouratt who hosted the event at the Underground club. During 1983, 30% of the US record sales were from British acts. On 18 July 1983, 18 singles in the top 40, and six in the top 10, were by British artists.
Decline and revivals stage at the
JFK Stadium in Philadelphia in July 1985, where Duran Duran played, while
Ultravox and Spandau Ballet appeared on the
Wembley stage in the UK|left Music journalist Dave Rimmer considered the
Live Aid concert of July 1985 as the peak for the various acts that rose from the New Romantic scene of the early '80s, commenting that after which "everyone seemed to take hubristic tumbles". Simon Reynolds also notes the "
Do They Know It's Christmas?" single in late 1984 and Live Aid in 1985 as turning points, with the acts that the movement spawned as having become decadent, with "overripe arrangements and bloated videos" for songs like Duran Duran's "
The Wild Boys" and Culture Club's "
The War Song". The proliferation of acts using synthesisers had led to an anti-synth backlash, with groups including Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell, and
ABC incorporating more conventional influences and instruments into their sounds by 1983. , seen here in 2012, wearing New Romantic-inspired clothing reminiscent of his early 80s period:
bicorne hat,
hussar jacket,
pirate shirt and leather gloves 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. In the UK, the arrival of
indie rock bands, particularly
the Smiths, has been claimed by the
music press as marking the end of synth-driven
new wave and the beginning of the raw guitar-based music that would come to dominate rock in the 1990s, with these bands adopting "the kind of
jangling guitar work that had typified
new wave music", as a "reaction against the opulence/corpulence of nouveau rich '
new pop'" and as "part of the move back to guitar-driven music after the keyboard washes of the New Romantics". By the end of the 1980s, many acts had been dropped by their labels and the solo careers of many artists who had been associated with the New Romantic scene would gradually fade over time. In the mid-1990s, the New Romantic era was the subject of
nostalgia-oriented club nights — such as
the Human League-inspired "Don't You Want Me", and "Planet Earth", a Duran Duran-themed night club whose promoter told
The Sunday Times, "It's more of a celebration than a revival". In the same period it was also an inspiration for the
Romo musical movement. It was championed by
Melody Maker, who featured the scene - proclaiming that it was a "future pop explosion" - on its front cover in 1995 and inside claiming that
Britpop had been "executed" to make way for it, and including bands
Orlando, Plastic Fantastic,
Minty, Viva,
Sexus, Hollywood and DexDexTer. None of the Romo acts made the British top 75 in their own right, although Orlando charted at number 65 with "How Can We Hang on to a Dream" as part of the
Fever Pitch soundtrack EP. After an unsuccessful
Melody Maker-organised tour, most of the bands soon broke up. ==Documentaries and films==