54 albums · 1977–2021

New wave, from New York and London to synth-pop, the New Romantics, Neue Deutsche Welle and today

· 2 min read · by 1001 Albums

Sting in an open shirt singing at a microphone and playing a pale bass guitar, stage lights behind him, in a black and white photograph
Dave Stewart in sunglasses and a studded jacket playing a white guitar and Annie Lennox with short bleached hair in a long dark coat at a microphone, a saxophonist and a bassist behind them in stage smokeJoanne Catherall at a microphone stand and Phil Oakey singing beside Neil Sutton, who plays a white keytar, in red stage light
Sting of the Police at the Agora Ballroom in Atlanta, April 1979. Photo: Acroterion, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Eurythmics at Rock am Ring, June 1987. Photo: Elmar J. Lordemann, CC BY-SA 2.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons. · The Human League at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, April 2011. Photo: Ludovic Hirlimann, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

New wave came out of punk in the late seventies. The name was first used for the bands around CBGB in New York and for the British groups after 1977 who kept punk's short songs and energy but brought back pop melodies, keyboards, reggae and funk rhythms and ideas from art school. By the early eighties synthesizers and drum machines carried much of it as synth-pop, and the music videos of MTV, which began in 1981, took it to America.

Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Blondie and the Cars made their first albums in 1977 and 1978, and the Police, XTC, Squeeze, Joe Jackson and the Pretenders followed. Gary Numan, Yellow Magic Orchestra in Tokyo and Ultravox turned to the synthesizer, and the Human League, OMD, Soft Cell, Yazoo and Depeche Mode made synth-pop of it. In London's clubs the New Romantics began with Visage, Duran Duran and ABC. Beside them are Split Enz from New Zealand, INXS from Australia, Nena and DAF of the Neue Deutsche Welle, Alaska y Dinarama of Madrid's Movida, Indochine from Paris and a-ha from Norway, then Eurythmics, Talk Talk and Tears for Fears. In the 2000s Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, the Killers and Bloc Party took up the sound again, and later come Ladytron, La Roux, CHVRCHES, Future Islands, Molchat Doma from Belarus and Nation of Language.

The list has 54 records from 1977 to 2021. It leaves out the singles, where much of new wave was first heard, most of the post-punk and gothic rock that grew beside it, which the punk list has some of, and the albums Deezer does not have, among them the B-52's' first album, Devo's Freedom of Choice on its own and Spandau Ballet's True and Adam and the Ants' Kings of the Wild Frontier in their first editions. About 44 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

Punk & New Wave 33%Pop 27%Rock 25%Other 15%
  • Punk & New Wave 33%
  • Pop 27%
  • Rock 25%
  • Other 15%

The genres named most: new wave, synth-pop, rock, electronic, pop, pop rock.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 10 countries: United Kingdom 32, United States 11, France 2, Germany 2, Australia 1 and 5 more. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Genres first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.