new wave
A broad genre of post-punk-influenced pop music from the late 1970s and 1980s, characterized by synthesizers, angular guitars, and an art-school aesthetic.
In Depth
New wave emerged alongside punk rock in the late 1970s but diverged by embracing pop melody, electronic instruments, and visual style. The term encompassed a wide range of sounds — from the minimal synthesizer pop of Gary Numan and Depeche Mode to the guitar-driven angularity of Talking Heads and XTC, to the dark atmospherics of Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Cure.
The genre dominated popular music in the early 1980s, with MTV providing a visual platform for its fashion-conscious, often theatrical performers. Duran Duran, the Human League, A-ha, and Eurythmics all achieved massive commercial success. New wave's embrace of synthesizers and electronic production permanently altered mainstream pop music. Its influence cycles through subsequent decades — the post-punk revival of the 2000s (Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, the Killers) and synth-pop nostalgia of the 2010s both drew heavily on new wave's sonic and visual vocabulary.
The term "new wave" was borrowed from the French film movement "Nouvelle Vague" — both movements shared an emphasis on artistic experimentation, youthful energy, and stylistic self-consciousness.