New Music (music industry)
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New Pop was 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
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. 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
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. The term "
rockist Rockism and poptimism are two ideological arguments about popular music prevalent in mainstream music journalism. Rockism is the belief that rock music is dependent on values such as authenticity in art, authenticity and high art, artfulness, ...
", a pejorative against people who shunned this type of music, coincided and was associated with New Pop.Harvel, Jess
"Now That's What I Call New Pop!".
'' Pitchfork Media. 12 September 2005.
"New Music" is a roughly equivalent but slightly more expansive umbrella term for a pop music and cultural phenomenon in the US associated with the Second British Invasion. 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.


Characteristics

Many New Pop artists created music that sweetened less commercial and experimental aspects with a
pop Pop or POP may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Pop music, a musical genre Artists * POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade * Pop!, a UK pop group * Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band Albums * ''Pop'' (G ...
coating. Entryism became a popular concept for groups at the time. New Music acts were danceable, had an
androgynous Androgyny is the possession of both masculine and feminine characteristics. Androgyny may be expressed with regard to biological sex, gender identity, or gender expression. When ''androgyny'' refers to mixed biological sex characteristics i ...
look, emphasized the
synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...
and drum machines, wrote about the darker side of romance, and were British. They rediscovered rockabilly,
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, ska, reggae and merged it with African rhythms to produce what was described as a "fertile, stylistic cross-pollination". Author
Simon Reynolds Simon Reynolds (born 19 June 1963) is an English music journalist and author who began his professional career on the staff of ''Melody Maker'' in the mid-1980s. He has since gone on to freelance and publish a number of full-length books on music ...
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." The term "New Music" or "New Pop" was used loosely to describe
synthpop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s a ...
groups such as the Human League, soul-disco acts such as
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, new wave acts such as
Elvis Costello Declan Patrick MacManus Order of the British Empire, OBE (born 25 August 1954), known professionally as Elvis Costello, is an English singer-songwriter and record producer. He has won multiple awards in his career, including a Grammy Award in ...
and the Pretenders, jangle pop bands such as Orange Juice, and American MTV stars such as Michael Jackson.
Stephen Holden Stephen Holden (born July 18, 1941) is an American writer, poet, and music and film critic. Biography Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963. He worked as a photo editor, staff writer, and eventually be ...
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. New Music was a singles oriented (both 7 inch and the then new 12 inch) phenomenon, reverting the 1970s rock music album orientation.


Etymology

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


History

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. Around this time, the term "
rockist Rockism and poptimism are two ideological arguments about popular music prevalent in mainstream music journalism. Rockism is the belief that rock music is dependent on values such as authenticity in art, authenticity and high art, artfulness, ...
" would gain popularity to disparagingly describe music that privileged traditionalist rock styles. According to '' Pitchfork''s Jess Harvel: "If new pop had an architect, it was
he writer He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
Paul Morley." 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. 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. In reaction to New Music, album-oriented rock radio stations doubled the amount of new acts they played and the format "Hot Hits" emerged. By 1983, in a year when half of the new artists came out of New Music, acts such as
Duran Duran Duran Duran () are an English Rock music, rock band formed in Birmingham in 1978 by singer and bassist Stephen Duffy, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and guitarist/bassist John Taylor (bass guitarist), John Taylor. With the addition of drummer Roger ...
,
Culture Club Culture Club are an English pop band formed in London in 1981. The band comprises Boy George (lead vocals), Roy Hay (guitar and keyboards), Mikey Craig (bass guitar) and formerly included Jon Moss (drums and percussion). Emerging in the New ...
and Men at Work were dominating the charts and creating an alternate music and cultural mainstream.
Annie Lennox Ann Lennox (born 25 December 1954) is a Scottish singer-songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving moderate success in the late 1970s as part of the New wave music, new wave band the Tourists, she and fellow musician D ...
and Boy George were the two figures most associated with New Music.


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 "
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" to describe New Music musicians. The 1985
Dire Straits Dire Straits were a British rock band formed in London in 1977 by Mark Knopfler (lead vocals and lead guitar), David Knopfler (rhythm guitar and backing vocals), John Illsley (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Pick Withers (drums and percuss ...
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. 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. Richard Blade, a disc jockey at Los Angeles radio station
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, speaking of the late 1980s said, "You felt there was a winding-down of music. Thomas Dolby's album had bombed,
Duran Duran Duran Duran () are an English Rock music, rock band formed in Birmingham in 1978 by singer and bassist Stephen Duffy, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and guitarist/bassist John Taylor (bass guitarist), John Taylor. With the addition of drummer Roger ...
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?' " 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.Cateforis pp. 65-67


References


Bibliography

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Further reading

*Rimmer, Dave. ''Like Punk Never Happened: Culture Club and the New Pop''. Faber and Faber, 2011, . {{Pop music 1980s in music New wave music Pop music Post-punk Progressive pop 1980s in British music British popular music