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If the 1970s was the decade of disco, the 19805 may be the decade in which dancing Americans return to rock 'n' roll.
This surprising turnaround may be seen—and heard— in the increasing popularity of New Wave music, a highly danceable, energetic style of rock.
Record companies are aggressively signing New Wave bands. Conventional rock-format radio stations that once shunned this music as too experimental and anti-social are now regularly playing the records of such New Wave artists as Talking. Heads, Elvis Costello, The Ramones, The Cash, Blondie, and Joe Jackson.
Part of New Wave's appeal lies in its musical experimentation and no-frills lyrics—often expressing dissatisfaction or disillusion with modern life.
New Wave songs replace 1960s-style odes to peace and love with hard-boiled assessments of life.
"I want to bite the hand that feeds me," says Elvis Costello. "I am isolated and alienated," cries David Byrne of Talking Heads.
Such anger fired New Wave's antecedent, "punk rock"—a crude, loud, and short-lived style. Eventually, however, punk and other types of pop music—electronic music, Jamaican reggae and ska, early 1960s rock—became integrated under the label "New Wave," a term first applied in 1977 by Seymour Stein, president of Sire Records, to lessen the notoriety associated with the more violent punk rock bands.
While it looks forward to the 1980s, New Wave music also looks back to the 1950s and early 1960s. The simple, "innocent" rock of the early Beatles, for example, is echoed in a form of New Wave called Power Pop, typified by The Knack.
The fashions of that era—skinny black ties, miniskirts, leopard print dresses, go-go boots, black leather jackets, wraparound sunglasses—are standard garb at rock clubs. Hair is cropped, sometimes rainbow-hued. Noticeably absent are the trappings of the late 1960s— long hair, denim shirts, work boots.
New Wave music's appeal can also be traced to a decline in the popular-
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