New music

New music may refer to:

See also

New Music (music industry)

New Music was an umbrella term used by the music industry and by music journalists in the United States during the 1980s to describe music acts who had come to commercial success in the United States through the cable music channel MTV. It was a pop music and cultural phenomenon in the United States associated with the Second British Invasion.

Characteristics

Many 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. New Music acts rediscovered rockabilly, Motown, ska, reggae and merged it with African rhythms to produce what was described as a "fertile, stylistic cross-pollination". The term "New Music" was also used to describe new wave acts such as Elvis Costello and the Pretenders, and American MTV stars such as Michael Jackson.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. New Music was a singles oriented (both 7 inch and the then new 12 inch) phenomenon, reverting the 1970s rock music album orientation.

New wave music

New wave music is a musical genre of pop/rock created in the late 1970s to mid-1980s with ties to 1970s punk rock. The wide range of bands categorized under this term has been a source of much confusion and controversy. The new wave sound of the late 1970s moved away from the smooth blues and rock & roll sounds to create music with a twitchy, agitated feel, choppy rhythm guitars and fast tempos. Initially—as with the later post-punk—new wave was broadly analogous to punk rock before branching as a distinctly identified genre, incorporating electronic/experimental music, mod, disco and pop. It subsequently engendered subgenres and fusions, including synthpop, college rock and gothic rock.

New wave differs from other movements with ties to first-wave punk as it displays characteristics common to pop music, rather than the more "arty" post-punk, though it incorporates much of the original punk rock sound and ethos while arguably exhibiting greater complexity in both music and lyrics. Common characteristics of new wave music, aside from its punk influences, include the use of synthesizers and electronic productions, the importance of styling and the arts, as well as a great amount of diversity.