Genres: punk, new wave and what came next
Punk, new wave, post-punk, no wave and Neue Deutsche Welle were never five neat boxes. They were overlapping answers to one question, asked in New York, London and West Germany between 1974 and 1984: what happens if you strip rock music back and start again?
The labels came from journalists and record companies as much as from musicians. Around 1976 and 1977 punk and new wave were close to interchangeable. Sire Records, home of the Ramones and Talking Heads, favoured new wave partly because punk made radio programmers nervous. Within a few years the words had drifted apart: punk stood for speed and confrontation, new wave for sharper songwriting, synthesizers and open pop ambition.
Post-punk describes what British bands did once the three-chord formula felt used up. Wire, Gang of Four, Joy Division and The Slits took ideas from dub, funk and art school. No wave was New York's far shorter and harsher refusal of all of it, documented on the 1978 compilation No New York. Neue Deutsche Welle began as an underground in Düsseldorf, Hamburg and West Berlin and ended as chart pop, with Nena's 99 Luftballons as its best known export.
Each guide here gives the dates, places and records that define a style and says plainly where the boundaries are disputed. If you prefer to read it all in order, the timeline on the homepage lines up the same events year by year.
In this section
5 pages
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Neue Deutsche Welle: NDW bands, records and history
The Neue Deutsche Welle explained: German new wave from its underground start in 1979 to the chart boom of 1982 and 1983, with the key NDW bands, labels and cities.
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No wave: New York's noise underground, 1977 to 1982
No wave explained: the New York scene of DNA, Mars, Teenage Jesus and the Contortions, the Artists Space shows of 1978, Brian Eno's No New York and its legacy.
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Post-punk explained: sound, cities and key records
What post-punk is, how it grew out of punk in 1977 and 1978, how it sounds and which bands, labels and cities defined it, from Manchester to Leeds and Berlin.
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The history of punk rock, 1974 to 1984
How punk rock began in New York, exploded in London in 1976, spread to Manchester, Berlin and California and turned into hardcore by 1984. Dates, places, records.
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What is new wave music? Origins, sound and key bands
New wave explained: how the term grew out of punk in 1976 and 1977, what the music sounds like, which bands defined it and why MTV made it global.
Other sections
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Scenes
CBGB on the Bowery, New York punk and London in 1976: the clubs, shops and people that turned a few local bands into a movement.
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Lists
The best punk albums, new wave songs, and the punk, post-punk and new wave bands that matter, each entry with year, place and a reason.
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Songs
The stories behind punk and new wave songs: recording, line-up, chart history and meaning, told in our own words and without printing any lyrics.
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Bands
Independent band profiles from punk and new wave, starting with Blondie: line-ups, key records and where each band fits in the story.
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Press
How NME, Sounds, Creem, Punk magazine and Sniffin' Glue covered and shaped punk and new wave, from weekly music papers to photocopied fanzines.
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Vinyl
Practical guides to collecting punk records, identifying first pressings and choosing a turntable, with clear criteria and no made-up test results.