It’s the age-old story in pop music — when the hits start drying up, it’s time to grab the current “hot” producer and jump on the latest trend, hoping to ride it to the top of the charts. You know what I’m talking about, Madonna. After all, it worked at the dawn of the ’80s, when Streisand rode the Bee Gees’ heat to score a few huge hits from her collaboration with Barry Gibb on the Guilty album. But Streisand hadn’t had a Top 40 hit in four years when 1985 rolled around, yet she wasn’t quite ready to become relegated to standards and schmaltz yet (that would come with her next release, The Broadway Album). Babs wanted a hit, so the call went out and producer Richard Perry answered it.

Perry was white-hot at the time, coming off his production of the Pointer Sisters’ mega-platinum smash, Breakout, which just seemed to spawn hit after hit after hit (an astounding six singles were drawn from that album). Perry brought a song called “Emotion” (download) to Babs’s attention, and it was chosen to not only be the album’s namesake, but its first single. While not really new wave, per se, it was definitely awash in the synths and drum machines of the day, sounding much like a Pointer Sisters outtake. That could also have to do with the fact that the Sisters provide backing vocals on the tune.

Streisand’s longtime label, Columbia, must have had high hopes for “Emotion,” since they pulled out all the promotional stops. A sumptuously lavish video featuring guest stars Roger Daltrey (?) and Mikhail Baryshnikov (?!?) had thousands of dollars thrown at it, including securing heavy rotation as an MTV exclusive. The result was a camp-tacular spectacle. Make sure you at least get to the 2:30 mark to witness … PUNK-ROCK STREISAND! (more…)

Popularity: 17% [?]

After years of singer/songwriter musings, several albums and hit singles for Elektra Records, Carly Simon changed paths in the early ’80s, signing to Warner Brothers Records. Her first album for the label, Come Upstairs had a faintly New Wave tinge, as Simon flirted with power pop, scoring an old-school Carly hit in the process with the sublime low self-esteem anthem “Jesse”. She then worked with Chic on an intriguing single for the Soup For One soundtrack called “Why” that hit big overseas and in dance clubs Stateside. But following that with an album of standards (Torch) and the stylistic retreat of Hello Big Man didn’t help her saleswise, so by 1985, Carly was shopping around for a new label.

Signing with Epic, Simon released Spoiled Girl, a jarring artistic shift, one of those musical face lifts that had the potential to end up less Jane Seymour and more Jocelyn Wildenstein. Epic wanted Simon to compete with the Madonnas of the pop world, so they surrounded her with synths, drum machines and producers…eight of them, including New Wave/Electro pioneer Arthur Baker, no less. Baker remixed the album’s first single, the unintentionally campy “Tired Of Being Blonde”, a strange yet catchy anthem over-produced to the point of a Linn Drum spilling out of the speakers. “Blonde” came in a nice, chart-ready package, complete with the standard “what the hell?” video as was de rigeur for 1985 (directed by Jeremy Irons, no less):

So, um…the protagonist escapes from her rich, controlling lover by jumping on board a spaceship? Huh, wha?”Tired Of Being Blonde” did little more than perplex people, stuttering in the lower reaches of the charts. Epic didn’t give up, and issued the slightly more Carly “My New Boyfriend” as a second single. A fun song, “My New Boyfriend” combined the New Wave elements with a more traditional Carly Simon sound much more successfully, but even with yet another bewildering video featuring Carly as a white jungle goddess hopping around a campfire (…really?), chart action was not meant to be:

Spoiled Girl isn’t a bad album at all, really, just a bit dated and misguided. There are flashes of brilliance, particularly on “The Wives Are In Connecticut”, probably the most “traditional” Carly Simon song on the set. Tellingly, it’s also the song from the album most likely to show up on the countless Simon compilations since. Two years and yet another new label later, Simon regained her Adult Contemporary/Pop throne with Coming Around Again, her biggest album since 1978’s Boys In The Trees, effectively shutting the door on her New Wave experimentation for good.

“Tired Of Being Blonde” peaked at #70 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart in 1985.
“My New Boyfriend” did not chart.

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Popularity: 8% [?]

If Led Zeppelin fans were taken aback at the increasing number of synthesizers on the final proper Zep album In Through The Out Door, a product of vocalist Robert Plant and bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones huddling together at the exclusion of guitarist Jimmy Page, they may have completely revolted when faced with Plant’s early ’80s solo output. Awash in keys, synth flourishes and even some drum machines, Plant’s solo work edged closer and closer to New Wave with each release, culminating in 1985 with a straight-ahead synthpop single, “Little By Little”, complete with club mixes.

But first (there’s my Julie Chen impersonation for you!), Plant had a breakthrough on the Top 40 charts with a couple of singles from 1983’s (Best Year for Music Ever!) The Principle of Moments, starting with the plodding, Zeppelin-ish “Big Log”, but it was the lazy-sunshine-y, sublime, synth-soaked “In The Mood” that made non-Zep fans’ ears perk up. As a black-hair-dyed in the wool New Waver, I normally wouldn’t be caught dead with a Led Zep LP, but “In The Mood” made me buy a cassette of Principle… and crank it in my Walkman daily during my paper route.

And the rest of the album didn’t disappoint. Far from squealing bluesy guitar workouts, the disc is full of evocative mood pieces like a particular favorite, “Thru’ With The Two Step”, which swings from a dark synth intro to an AOR guitar ballad to a near waltz within 5:32, all held together by a enjoyably restrained Plant performance. It’s quite a feat.

Plant went even further into New Wave territory with his next album, Shaken & Stirred, but that’s another story for another time…

“In The Mood” peaked at #39 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at #4 on the Mainstream Rock Charts in 1983.
“Thru’ With The Two Step” was an album track.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Sheena Easton, the adult comtemporary pop princess of the early ’80s, got a bit of a makeover in 1984 with her album, A Private Heaven, thanks to the Top 5 hit, “Strut”, and the Prince-penned ode to, um, anatomy, “Sugar Walls”, which hit the Top 10. While Heaven’s first two singles had a decidedly dance-pop feel, the album’s third single had a New Wave pedigree.

It wasn’t Sheena’s first flirtation with New Wave - that would probably be the 1982 single “Machinery” that sputtered at #57 on the charts, while shmaltzy ballads like “Almost Over You” did considerably better. Either undettered or simply unable to learn her lesson, Easton dipped into the New Wave pool once again for Heaven’s third single, “Swear”, an almost note-for-note remake of an underground hit Tim Scott had released two years prior. The Scott version got a bit of club and college radio play, so maybe 1985 was the right time for the song to get its long-awaited crossover time in the sun.

Nope. “Swear” was Easton’s lowest-charting single (among her singles that actually charted). To be fair, it did better in dance clubs with its extended Dance Mix, but Top 40 radio just wasn’t havin’ it. The bland video didn’t help matters either:

Having said all that, I love this song. It’s so of its time, and the rap is unintentionally hysterical, but what else can you expect from a New Wave Sheena tune?

“Swear” peaked at #80 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart and at #43 on the Hot Dance Music Sales Chart in 1985.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Yeah, they did more than that song…

Buggles (no “The”, please) began as a trio, featuring future super-producer Trevor Horn, future Asia keyboardist Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley, who would leave the group prior to their debut release to form The Camera Club…but not before co-writing the Buggles’ major claim to fame, “Video Killed the Radio Star”. For a song that peaked at a paltry #40 on the Hot 100, “Video…” has enjoyed enduring fame, branding Buggles as one-hit wonders, true enough in the States. Overseas however, Buggles had a couple more UK hits, affording them the opportunity to head into the studio to record a follow-up album.

It was during these recording sessions that Horn & Downes found themselves in a studio next door to ’70s prog-rockers Yes, who were reeling from the departure of both their longtime vocalist and keyboardist. Things got chummy and before you could say “culture shock” or “Roger Dean cover”, Buggles soon found themselves as the newest members of Yes. It was probably the most literal example of When New Wave Happens To Old Artists.

The new-for-the-80s lineup of Yes produced one album, Drama, which wasn’t too bad considering. Horn sounded strangely comfortable filling Jon Anderson’s platform shoes, and the duo was not shy about contributing to the songwriting duties. One of the Horn/Downes tunes, “Into the Lens” actually began life as a Buggles song drafted for Yes-delayed second Buggles LP. Drama did reasonably well, but the new line-up found itself winding down. The down Downes left to help form a new prog-rock combo, Asia, while Horn went back to finishing that second Buggles album.

Adventures In Modern Recording was essentially a Horn solo project, with plenty of guest stars lending a hand. The title track is a fun, lightweight pop song about, well, making fun, lightweight pop songs.

The single didn’t chart, but a second single was worked, this one a little more familiar to Yes fans…“I Am A Camera” was that demo Buggles had prepared prior to joining Yes and watching it morph into “Into The Lens”. The Buggles version is a mellower, less hyper affair, perhaps even more prog-rock than the Yes version.

After the singles and album failed to catch fire like the first, Horn turned his attention to producing and one of his first of many huge successes behind the audio board came with 90125, the big 1983 comeback album for…Yes.

“Adventures In Modern Recording” and “I Am A Camera” both failed to chart.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Of all the mainstream artists to co-op New Wave, the most successful chart-wise by far was Kim Carnes. And I’m going to posit a fairly radical opinion - she may most successful on an artistic level as well, synthesizing New Wave’s flourishes and mechanical trappings into her own sound without losing or embarassing herself in the process (with one notable exception, which we’ll get to).

Carnes was floating around most of the ’70s as more of a folky singer/songwriter with little to minor success until she hit MOR paydirt with a Kenny Rogers duet, “Don’t Fall In Love With a Dreamer”. A solo hit with a remake of The Miracle’s “More Love” followed, and it looked like we might have a nice, comforable, hit-generating female Kenny Loggins on our hands.

“Bette Davis Eyes” changed all that.

It was another remake, this time of a 1974 Donna Weiss/Jackie DeShannon tune…the difference this time was producer Val Garay’s decision to record it live to tape with Carnes’ band drastically rearranging the song, shrouding it in drum machine hand claps and moody synth chords. The result was a timely, fresh Number One hit that topped the charts for nine weeks and won two Grammys.

The rest of the album Mistaken Identity isn’t quite all New Wave-y. In fact, there are several songs like “Hit and Run” and “Miss You Tonite” that are more like the Adult Contemporary Kim Carnes of old, which makes the choice of “Draw of the Cards” as the second single all the more intriguing. “Draw…” is dark, arty, atmospheric…pretty much like “Bette Davis Eyes”, only without the killer hooks. Don’t get me wrong - I love “Draw…”, especially because it got so far up the Top 40 without any real melody, save the repeated title as a chorus. And the video is creepy delicious, like Carnaval in Rio gone horribly wrong - don’t say I didn’t warn you in advance about the scary guy at the end:

Carnes wisely continued in this dark, dancey synthpop vein for her next album, Voyeur. The album’s lead single and title track was another great tune, but not as immediately catchy as “…Eyes”, yet it still made it into the Top 40, accompanied by a little-seen, spooky video where Kim is chased after witnessing a hooker get beaten - she hides out in a bar, slinks through dark alleys and runs into, um, a white horse and a ninja. I dunno. It was the Eighties.

After being part of the “We Are The World” recording and video (hey, if Dan Ackroyd can be there…), Carnes released “Invisible Hands”, a track and album that began to reflect the diminishing returns of her “Bette Davis Eyes” good will. The song is a bit of a dancefloor stomper though, all about the groove, personified by a killer synth bassline, but after about two and a half minutes, you’ve had enough. So, here’s the extended version! I’m a sadist, what can I say.

Carnes had fallen into a bit of a predictable pattern by this point - release a synthy, danceable lead single, follow that up with a more traditional ballad that would flop, repeat. The nadir of her New Wave flirtation was also her final solo appearance in the Top 40, “Crazy In The Night (Barking At Airplanes)”, a song just as embarrasing as its title. Wisely, Carnes then retreated back into duets with Kenny Rogers and Barbra Streisand, eventually settling in Nashville, where she has carved out a nice career as a songwriter while still recording the odd album here and there. But that’s how you do it, people - flirt with New Wave just long enough and know when to quit.

“Draw of the Cards” peaked at #28 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart in 1981.
“Voyeur” peaked at #29 on the same chart and at #52 on the Club Play Singles Chart in 1982.
“Invisible Hands” peaked at #40 on the Pop Singles Chart in 1983.

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- a lot of this stuff is out of print, but I highly recommend The Mistaken Identity Collection - it features the entire album, plus all her key singles as bonus tracks, all on one disc.

Popularity: 3% [?]