The 1980s - The New Romantics

The 1980s – New Romantics

The New Romantic movement was not only a term given to musical genre but also a fashion too. The New Romantic scene began in the early Eighties with some of the more popular bands including Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Adam & the Ants, Depeche Mode and the Human League.

The New Romantic scene had taken direct influence from punk and was happening parallel to the punk movement of the 80s. However, they differed greatly in fashion; the punks at the time would be dressed very working class and a lot less elegant than the New Romantics. The New Romantics were very glamorous and often wore make-up. This could be seen as a direct influence from the ‘Godfather of New Romanticism – David Bowie’ Bands often had fashion designers working for them. Adam & the Ants for example had Vivienne Westwood design for them. Westwood later designed the ‘pirate look’ for the group. For me, the scene and the fashion of this genre is one of the main reasons it appealed to so many. A good example of the typical New Romantic look is shown in this video for Duran Duran’s single – Planet Earth. The record reach number 12 in the UK Charts on the 21st Feb 1981.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-recskrzunI&feature=player_embedded

The New Romantic sound could be described as New wave, Synth, alternative Rock/Pop. The vocals were often dark and mysterious; you can really here the emotion in Duran Duran’s Simon Le bon’s voice. The guitarists often used effects and sometimes it is even hard to define the guitar from the keyboards. Although the vocals at times were dark the actual songs were usually quite upbeat and had a nice ‘danceable’ rhythm.
Lyrically the New Romantic bands could differ quite uniquely. ‘Vienna’ by Ultravox is a fantastically uplifting song, yet the lyrics are extremely eerie ‘A voice reaching out and a piercing cry, it stays with you until the feeling is gone’ and ‘Alone in the night as the daylight brings a cold empty silence, the warmth of your hand and a cold grey sky’ are great examples of this.
Duran Duran are probably the most significant band of the New Romantics. The band formed in Birmingham in 1978 and the original line-up consisted of Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, Andy Taylor, Stephen Duffy, and Roger Taylor. Duran Duran managed to place 14 singles in the top ten of the UK singles chart and 21 in the billboard hot 100. The band has now sold over a whopping 100 million records. Duran Duran began as an art rock/post punk alternative rock group but soon moved on. The bands influences could be traced back to the New York underground music scene of the 1970s with bands like The New York Dolls, The Velvet Underground and of course David Bowie.
The group have now reached the point where they have influenced a massive number of popular acts today. These names include Pink, Justin Timberlake, Beck and Gwen Stefani. Moby speaks about the band in high favour too, on his website diary he posted "... they were cursed by what we can call the 'Bee Gees' curse, which is: 'write amazing songs, sell tons of records, and consequently incur the wrath or disinterest of the rock obsessed critical establishment'."
Important albums of the genre included:
‘Rio’ by Duran Duran
‘Dancing with tears in my eyes’ - Ultravox
‘Japan’ – Japan
‘None stop ecstatic dancing ‘– Soft Cell
Important singles included:
‘Fade to grey’ – Visage
‘Girls on Film’ – Duran Duran
‘Cars’ – Gary Numan
‘Gold’ -Spandau Ballet

The main relationship between the music and society and culture of the time was fashion. As I said previously, The New Romantic movement was similar to that of the glam rock movement in the UK during the early 1970's. New Romantics often dressed up as 'Counter - Sexual' wearing eye liner and frilly tops. Boy George from New Romantic band Culture Club was massivley famous for dressing this way.

Without the New Romantic movement, I do believe that todays music would be vitaly different. Many of the modern British Indie Bands have quite clearly taken their sound direct from the sound of New Romanticism. Taje Franz Ferdinand for example, if you have a look at ' To Cut a long story short' music video by Spandau ballet, you can see that Franz Ferdinand have not only been inspired of the sound, but also of the bands stage movements and fashion and general demeener.


Webography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duran_Duran http://www.elyrics.net/read/u/ultravox-lyrics/vienna-lyrics.html
http://www.duranduran.com/wordpress/?page_id=13338
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=77:2684~T2