In the Remain in Light review, I suggested that the defining feature of new wave music is the synthesiser – that a synthesiserless band can’t be considered new wave. Maybe that’s not a very defensible thesis, given that some commentators consider new wave to be about songwriting style rather than instrumentation, but big deal. The […]
Dare by the Human League (1981) Read More »
So what exactly is “new wave” music? And what is its relationship to this thing called “post-punk”? Am I expected to believe that Duran Duran, a yacht-sailing boyband wearing blazers rolled up to their elbows, are part of the same musical genre as Talking Heads, creators of the thoroughly insane album that is the subject
Remain in Light by Talking Heads (1980) Read More »
Madonna, Prince, and Michael Jackson are typically said to comprise the (un)holy triumvirate of world bestriding 80s pop universalism, the “first stars of MTV” who were, intriguingly, all born in the summer of 1958. In my opinion, Prince does not quite belong in the company of the other two; he didn’t sell as many records
Like a Prayer by Madonna (1989) Read More »
Purple Rain sounds like futuristic jazz music; a unique, somewhat chaotic, almost sci-fi blend of pop, rock, funk, R’n’B, and disco, shot through with sex, incessant partying, and rockstar messianism. It’s a cocaine record; bombastic, ridiculous, affluent, funny, arty, an album for the wasted bourgeoisie of some shimmering, declining space-age society. Prince’s lovers take him
Purple Rain by Prince (1984) Read More »
I grew up with the Sting of the 90s, the messianic, humanitarian spiritual guru singing orientalist dance songs and talking about the impact of tantric yoga on his sex life. So it came as a bit of a shock to discover that he started his career as the rather Aryan-looking frontman of a sparse, sometimes
Synchronicity by the Police (1983) Read More »
In my imagination, the 60s and the 90s are decades of eternal sunshine, characterised by an upbeat, optimistic spirit and defined musically by unmistakeably red-blooded men wielding guitars and making rock music. In the 60s, the post-war consensus and economic boom were still very much intact and supplemented by a spirit of youthful, buoyant revolution;
Thriller by Michael Jackson (1982) Read More »
My favourite band growing up were the Manic Street Preachers, a Welsh rock act that rose to prominence in the early 90s and who were initially derided for being Clash rip-offs that stole their songs, their look, their entire schtick from Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. Even today, their records are peppered with Clash covers
London Calling by the Clash (1979) Read More »
Rumours is the sound of a disintegrating band. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were embroiled in a bad-tempered separation while making the album; they apparently hurled insults at each other across the studio in between recording their vocals. Christine McVie was blissfully loved up but, unfortunately, not with John McVie, Fleetwood Mac’s bassist and the
Rumours by Fleetwood Mac (1977) Read More »
It’s easy to forget that, in the late 1970s, there was indeed anarchy in the UK. The economic growth and broadly social democratic consensus of the post-war period had been obliterated by the 1973 oil shock, the repercussions of which were, by the end of the decade, reaching their harrowing climax in the nightmarish phenomenon
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols by the Sex Pistols (1977) Read More »
What madness is this? Coming immediately off the back of the review of Born to Run, surely one of the most musically and thematically cohesive rock albums of the 1970s, Queen’s A Night at the Opera appears downright demented, a schizophrenic rollercoaster careening from experimental prog rock to choral singing to heavy metal to vaudevillian
A Night at the Opera by Queen (1975) Read More »