Genre Research (Sabrina)

New Wave/ Pop:

A style of rock music popular in the 1970s and 1980s, deriving from punk but generally more pop in sound and less aggressive in performance.

The song 'Fashion' by David Bowie is part of the New wave movement, New wave music is an ambiguous category of pop or rock music from between the late 1970's to mid-1980's. New wave incorporates aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and pop music. New wave began in the early 1970's and had grown in popularity till 1977 when new wave" had replaced "punk" as the definition of new underground music in the UK. New Wave's roots can be traced back to 1969, when David Bowie first released the song "Space Oddity". However New wave is seen as one of the definitive genres of the 1980's.

Sound of New wave:

The music had a twitchy, edgy feel to it. Fast tempos and choppy rhythm guitars were common features of the of the New wave genre. Melodies were mainly made by keyboards as this enabled the song structure to be more rigid. New wave vocalists have been described as sounding 'high-pitched, geeky and suburban.'

Conventions of New wave:

New wave was very stylized in music videos and the fashion was very typical of the 1980's some were more outrageous than others, for example David Bowie - Ziggy stardust, but the style mainly consisted of suits. skinny ties and lycra.

Prezi:

New wave style mood board:

New wave video examples:

Blondie - Call Me

Blondie was one of the most iconic artists in the 1980's and also helped pioneer the New wave genre. This is reflected in her very stylized video. She is dressed all in blue to connote sadness in relation to the lyrics. There is a lot of abstract shots to convey the 'emotions' of the song, this is very typical of this genre. The video starts in an urban setting with cars , there is also fast edits following a man doing pull ups and lifting weights this conforms to society's and a primal idea of an acctractive male by showing his strength.

The B-52s - Private Idaho

This music video represents New wave through the post modern style of the 1950's/1960's, there is a geometric colorful background made popular in the 1960's. They use this merge of pop culture in an ironic and exaggerated way for example the the 60' hair being bigger than usual. However there is still the generic convention of the New Wave as they have reused the retro conventions in a new and exaggerated way which is typical of /new Wave. The video is purely a performance with no use of narrative. It uses long wide shots of the band and mid close ups of the lead singer miming, which is a convention, whilst the drummer is in the background; this reinforces the the ideology of them playing and coming together as a band. their are various camera angles of the band performing throughout and the use of cinematography, when the screen is split, is suggestive of good and evil as their costumes are black and white referencing an angel and and a demon.

David Bowie - Life On Mars?


This is a performance of the song i which David Bowie is just seen miming the song, this is obviously a convention of music video's and there is no narrative within the video just performance and Bowie just exprsses the song through facial exprssions and his use of costume. However it does give a pretty strong representation of the genre through clothing, style and performance.