The best new wave bands, from Blondie to R.E.M.

The best new wave bands turned punk’s energy into songs that could live on the radio. The short list: Blondie, Talking Heads, Devo, The Cars, The B-52’s, The Police, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, The Human League and Depeche Mode. New wave had two phases. From about 1976 to 1979 it meant guitar bands from the punk clubs who were more interested in hooks than in fury. From 1980 it increasingly meant synthesizers, videos and number one singles. The 18 bands below cover both, with formation year, home town and a record to start with. If you want the background first, read what new wave music is.

How we chose

We picked bands that either helped invent the sound or carried it to a new audience, and we limited the period to records released by 1984. Fame alone was not enough, and neither was being loosely associated with the eighties. Several bands that are often called new wave, such as Joy Division or Siouxsie and the Banshees, appear in our list of post-punk bands instead.

The guitar years, 1976 to 1979

1. Blondie (New York, 1974). Debbie Harry and Chris Stein started the band in the CBGB years, played next to the Ramones and Television and ended up with number one records in Britain and the US. They connect punk clubs and pop radio more directly than anyone. Start with Parallel Lines (1978). Our profile of Blondie has the full story.
2. Talking Heads (New York, 1975). Three art students from Rhode Island, later four with Jerry Harrison, who played their first show at CBGB in June 1975. Their nervous funk grew into the polyrhythms of Remain in Light (1980), which is the record to start with.
3. Devo (Akron, Ohio, 1973). Formed by art students at Kent State University around a theory of human regression that they called devolution. Brian Eno produced their debut Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978), the place to begin.
4. Elvis Costello and the Attractions (London, 1977). Costello released My Aim Is True on Stiff in 1977, then formed the Attractions and made This Year’s Model (1978). That second record is the tighter, angrier one and the better start.
5. The Cars (Boston, 1976). Ric Ocasek and Benjamin Orr had played together for years before The Cars made new wave sound right on American rock radio. Their debut The Cars (1978) is close to a greatest hits album.
6. The Police (London, 1977). Stewart Copeland, Sting and, from 1977, Andy Summers. They used punk’s speed and reggae’s space and became one of the biggest bands in the world by 1983. Outlandos d’Amour (1978) is the rawest start, Synchronicity (1983) the biggest.
7. The B-52’s (Athens, Georgia, 1976). A party band from a college town, with Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson, Cindy Wilson and Ricky Wilson’s strange guitar tunings. Their debut The B-52’s (1979) also put Athens on the map for R.E.M. a few years later.
8. XTC (Swindon, 1972 under other names, XTC from 1975). Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding wrote some of the most inventive songs of the era, then stopped touring in 1982. Start with Drums and Wires (1979).
9. The Pretenders (London, 1978). Chrissie Hynde had worked for the music press in London before forming a band with three musicians from Hereford. Their self-titled debut (1980) is the record to own.
10. The Go-Go’s (Los Angeles, 1978). Came out of the LA punk scene. Beauty and the Beat (1981) reached number one on the US album chart, the first time an all-female band that wrote its own songs and played its own instruments managed that.

The synthesizer years, 1979 to 1984

11. Tubeway Army and Gary Numan (London, 1977). A punk band that discovered a synthesizer in the studio. Replicas (1979) produced the number one single Are ‘Friends’ Electric?; Numan’s solo album The Pleasure Principle followed the same year.
12. The Human League (Sheffield, 1977). First an experimental electronic group, then, after a split in 1980, a pop band with two young singers added. Dare (1981) is one of the defining albums of the decade.
13. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (Wirral, 1978). Their first single Electricity came out on Factory in 1979. Architecture & Morality (1981) is the record to start with.
14. Ultravox (London, 1974). A punk-era band that changed singer and direction. With Midge Ure from 1979 they made Vienna (1980), where the grand, cinematic style of early eighties synth pop starts.
15. Depeche Mode (Basildon, 1980). Four young men from Essex with synthesizers and a talent for melody. Speak & Spell (1981) is the light-hearted start; the band became darker and much bigger later on.
16. Duran Duran (Birmingham, 1978). They became the resident band at the city’s Rum Runner club, and their glossy videos made them one of the first bands to grow up with MTV. Start with Rio (1982).
17. Nena (West Berlin, 1981). The band around singer Gabriele Kerner reached number one in West Germany with 99 Luftballons and number two in the US with the German version. They are the best known export of the Neue Deutsche Welle. Start with the debut Nena (1983).
18. R.E.M. (Athens, Georgia, 1980). Strictly at the end of the period. Murmur (1983), released on I.R.S., took the jangling guitars and mumbled singing of college radio into the album charts and showed where new wave would lead next.

Who is not on the list, and why

Kraftwerk shaped synth pop more than anyone but were an established band before punk and never part of a new wave scene. Joy Division, The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees sit under post-punk. Tears for Fears, Eurythmics and A Flock of Seagulls had their biggest years from 1983 onwards and would fill a list about eighties pop. For individual songs, our ranking of the best new wave songs has 20 singles, including some by bands not listed here.

A listening route

If you have one evening, play one record each from Blondie, Talking Heads, Devo, The B-52’s, The Human League and Depeche Mode. That covers the route from CBGB to the synth charts and from New York to the English suburbs. If you want to understand where the energy came from, go back to New York punk, where several of these bands played their first gigs.