FEATURE:
Fade to Grey
IN THIS PHOTO: Duran Duran
A Wish for the Return of the New Romantic Movement
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I can’t recall whether I have covered this before…
IN THIS PHOTO: Adam and the Ants
but I am a fan of New Romantic music, and I wonder whether it is one of those genres that was sort of left in the 1980s and it was evolved into something else. There are bygone movements like Glam and Disco that have been filtered into other sounds, even if the original genre is not intact as it was back then. I can’t bring to mind any modern acts that are inspired heavily by artists like Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Culture Club, and Johnny Hates Jazz. Of course, not everything about the genre was great! There was a lot of rather average New Romantic stuff that was put out, but I really have a soft spot for the classics. The New Romantic movement began in the U.K. during the late-1970s. The scene grew from nightclubs and it was defined by rather lavish and bold fashion. There was this influence of David Bowie and Marc Bolan of T. Rex, combined with images and ideals of the early Romantic period of the 18th and 19th centuries. I was born in 1983, and I think there was some New Romantic music around that time. Spandau Ballet were still going strong, but things started to fade away by 1981. Many of the artists abandoned the clothing and fashion – although Boy George of Culture Club still retained a lot of that look -, and I think there was a brief attempt to bring back New Romantic music and fashion in the 1990s.
In 2009, David Johnson wrote in The Guardian, and he explained how Spandau Ballet were the band who sort of defined the movement early on:
“One band defined a new direction for music and shifted its driving rhythm from the guitar to the bass and drum. They also made it hip to play pop. They were Spandau Ballet, who within three years went from leaders of a cult to one of four British groups (with Duran Duran, Culture Club and Wham!) who led dozens of stylish young clubland acts into the charts. They spread the new sounds and styles of London around the globe so that designers of its street fashion, too, became the toast of world capitals. And all because, unknown to a backward record business, a vast dance underground was gagging for a revolution in club culture.
Every Tuesday for a year, Strange had been declaring a "private party" in the shabby Blitz wine bar off Covent Garden. Outrage secured entry. Inside, precocious 19-year-olds presented an eye-stopping collage, posing away in wondrous ensembles, emphatic make-up and in-flight haircuts that made you feel normality was a sin. Hammer Horror met Rank starlet. Here was Lady Ample Eyefull, there Sir Gesting Sharpfellow, lads in breeches and frilly shirts, white stockings and ballet pumps, girls as Left Bank whores or stiletto-heeled vamps dressed for cocktails in a Berlin cabaret, wicked witches, kohl-eyed ghouls, futuristic man machines.
IN THIS PHOTO: Spandau Ballet
In response to that, try this bold claim. When Spandau Ballet emerged, their strategy was to enlist their entourage of creative night owls not only to stage-manage the fastest launch yet of a new band but also to redefine youth culture in the working-class terms prescribed by the late George Melly, author of the essential paperback Revolt Into Style (1970). He claimed the first duty of pop is to "trap the present" and express the aspirations of society "as it is", not as others would wish. The Durannies, on the other hand, had nakedly commercial ambitions.
Spandau placed fresh emphasis on clothes and presentation, on self-respect conveyed both by the voice of Tony Hadley, and by dislocated lyrics underpinned with streetwise conviction. Spandau Ballet defined the new direction of pop by opening a debate about the credibility of "pure pop" as a celebration of the sexiness of youth, then claiming to have relegated "rock" to the album charts for good. Today in the eyes of their schoolmate turned manager, Steve Dagger, that makes them "the bravest band – we put up a flag musically and culturally".
On 1st October, a new book by Dylan Jones, Sweet Dreams: From Club Culture to Style Culture, the Story of the New Romantics, is out, and it is a book that will prove fascinating and insightful to those who were around at the birth of the New Romantic movement, but it will be illuminating for a lot of people who are less familiar. I would encourage people to buy the book. Alexis Petridis wrote a review for The Guardian. A few passages caught my eye:
“This wasn’t the only way in which the New Romantics, as they became known, presaged the world in which we live now, which is one of the arguments of Dylan Jones’s book. He was there at the time (his first job was with i-D, one of the new-fangled “style” magazines that sprang up to document the movement; he has long been editor of British GQ). And he evidently feels he has something to prove, a historical wrong to right. For all their commercial success, the New Romantics attracted much derision: in some quarters, they still do.
They were held responsible for ending the politically charged era of pop embodied by Two Tone and the Jam’s “Eton Rifles” and refocusing music on more frivolous matters: Billy Bragg was apparently so horrified by the sight of Spandau Ballet that he felt impelled to start his own solo career.
Sweet Dreams loses focus when the New Romantic bands become huge in the US. As Jones notes, their biggest successes came because they pursued the mainstream, rather than vice-versa. The shock of the new that accompanied the first wave of synthesiser-driven hits dissipates: none of the music sounds as groundbreaking or extraordinary as Boy George looks. Meanwhile, rather than engender flamboyant individualism, the style magazines start doing the opposite: reflecting a new conformity, a codified notion of sophistication involving mass consumption of “designer” goods. Jones seems to lose interest, pursuing other pop-cultural threads that don’t quite tie together, from Madonna and Prince to the launch of the Groucho Club, and Sweet Dreams starts feeling not unlike falling down an internet rabbit hole. You find yourself reading about Hall And Oates, a US pop-soul duo who have about as much to do with the New Romantics as the cast of Dad’s Army, thinking: how did I get here?”.
This all sort of takes me to 2020. It is a confusing and strange year, but I think there is a chance and need to bring about these new movements that take influence from the past. Disco is being funnelled through Pop and other genres by artists like Dua Lipa and Róisín Murphy.
Maybe Glam, sadly, is not as common and heard as it should be, but I would love to see a fresh wave of New Romantic music and fashion – would it be the New New Romantics?! There is a lot of anger and political tension right now and, if New Romantic artists inspired some rebellion and pushback from artists in the 1980s and earlier, I think New Romantic music would balance that out now - but it could also be political. It would be a more colourful and flamboyant form of political movement and, rather than being a lazy throwback, I think a revised and renewed New Romantic scene could tackle sexuality, political, society, race and gender roles; the music could combine the original sounds of the 1970s and 1980s, together with other genres. I think it would be slightly odd or inauthentic if a 2020 New Romantic movement was to come about that was a photocopy of the first wave, but there is something missing from the modern scene. To finish, I am going to end with a playlist – as I do with a lot of features – that combines some of the best New Romantic music. It not only shows how strong the movement was, but how we could easily regenerate it and get a modern equivalent working. Although I was not born when the New Romantic artists came through, I heard a lot of the music when I was growing up and really love it still. Although 2020 is a pretty grey and bleak year I think, with some planning, modifications and small steps, there could be a new injection of…
NEW Romantic gold.