New Wave

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New wave is a music genre that encompasses numerous pop-oriented styles from the late 1970s and the 1980s. It was originally used as a catch-all for the music that emerged after punk rock, including punk itself, but may be viewed retrospectively as a more accessible counterpart of post-punk. Although new wave shared punk's DIY philosophy, they avoided the iconoclastic, abrasive and political aspects of punk rock; the artists were more influenced by the bubble-gum, bourgeois strains of 1960s pop while opposed to mainstream "corporate" rock, which they considered creatively stagnant. In the early 1980s, virtually every new pop/rock act – and particularly those that featured synthesizers in their sound – was tagged as "new wave". By the 2000s, critical consensus favored "new wave" to be an umbrella term that encompassed power pop, synth-pop, ska revival, and the softer strains of punk rock. New wave peaked commercially in the late 1970s and the early 1980s with numerous major artists and an abundance of one-hit wonders. After MTV was launched in 1981, the network promoted new wave acts heavily on the channel, which gave the genre a boost in popularity. In the mid-1980s, new wave declined with the emergence of several "new" labels: New Romantic, New Pop, and New Music. Since the 1990s, new wave has enjoyed some resurgences after a rising nostalgia for several new wave-influenced artists.
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