Is the term New Romantic an insult?

[girl about town]

Hello all,

As a woman who lived through the eighties as a teen, I always felt offended when Japan were pigeonholed as a "NEW ROMANTIC" band, I personally felt there was more substance and credibility to them than bands such as Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran and Culture Club. I am not in any way dismissing the aforementioned, however, I always felt insulted when Japan were referred to as New Romantics, okay they wore a bit of make-up, they never wore their mums curtains though. I always preferred the term "New Wave". Am I alone in this thought or have I had too much champagne (woah, how eighties is that? ) I have had a cr@ppy week . I do like DD, just don't feel they had the musical integrity Japan had/have, sorry guys!

Love and namaste to all.

[Astronaut]

Champagne eh? Youre right, that is sooo 80's! LOL! You go for it girl! OK, New Romantic? Hmmm, after I read your post I thought, yeah, Girlabout ... that sums it up really. I too was a teenager in the 80's and I also thought the term New Romantic didn't sit very well on Japan's immaculately tailored shoulderpads! They seemed to be above and beyond all that frilly shirt wearing stuff, it's as if they dipped their toes in the New Romantic pool, decided it was too tepid and quickly left for something more esoteric and exotic. I'm not too sure how I would categorise them (I distinctly dislike fixing labels onto people or things - seems so limiting) and I'm not sure New Wave covers it really. I would automatically associate the term New Wave with the late 70's New York scene: Patti Smith, Television, Blondie etc, etc, although I appreciate the term is also associated with the very late 70's UK groups like The Jam, The Police and so on, but Japan don't seem to fit in that category either, as UK New Wave IMHO was rather working class/socio-political in it's subject matter whereas Japan were rather more aspirational ... Could they reasonably be described as avant garde?

As for Duran, well they rather quickly jumped off the New Romatic bandwagon and ditched their frilly shirts, headbands and pixie boots and by 1982 were seen sporting the 'tailors dummy' look of Mr Anthony Price! Sadly for Spandau Ballet (and I mean no offence to any of their fans) they took a very long time to ditch their mum's tea towels and curtains and will forever be associated with New Romaticism - shame!

[Lady Arcadia]

I personally never saw Japan as New Romantic - or Futuristic as it was called in the beginning, (New Romantic was the term coined later on). I tended to see Japan as the band just before the movement took off.

The image was copied by alot of New Romantic bands, especially Duran - Read both the Last Romantic book and Notorious to see what I mean.

[anortherncod]

I agree that Japan weren't New Romantics. However I always thought of New Wave as largely being an American term for groups who weren't quite mainstream - like Talking Heads for example - but that doesn't fit Japan either.

I know Wikipedia is full of errors, but it lists them as an 'art rock' band and I quite like that!

Natasha

[Melaszka]

Japan themselves always fervently rejected the "New Romantic" label, but then again, I don't know of any band who actually described themselves as New Romantics, other than DD very, very briefly (and they were subsequently cruelly derided by the London-dominated press as provincial yokels [terminology? can someone from an industrial city like Birmingham be a yokel? you know what I mean] for not being metropolitan and hip enough to know that using the label "New Romantic" was desperately uncool).

I loved the New Romantic fashions, and wore my mother's tablecloths with pride! Then again, I was about 12 at the time.

I think New Romanticism was an invention of the fashion and PR industries, drawing on looks pioneered by Sylvian, Adam Ant etc, not really a bona fide musical movement at all. For me, even lumping DD, Spandau and Culture Club in the same group is a bit misleading - their music is very different. At my school, though, those three bands were popular with mainly under-13s, whereas Japan (along with the Associates, the Smiths, the Cocteau Twins and a bunch of indie bands) were more popular with the older and very trendy girls (I liked Japan AND DD, though, and never had much time for the Associates, and I wasn't trendy at all, though, so this was not a constant, and may have been very different at other schools)

Then again, in my view, labels in general (like "New Romantic", "New Wave" or even much broader ones like "rock" and "pop") are often more used by fans than the bands themselves, who are often very happy to cross generic boundaries and see what they do as simply producing music they like.

I've also always found "New Wave" a bit of a meaningless catch-all term, which music journos tend to pull out of the bag when they don't know how else to describe any band from the late 70s or 80s that is a bit "edgy" and doesn't obviously fit into any other pigeonhole.

[sorrowbox]

ETA: I started typing before Melaszka posted, so my apologies if some parts are a bit repetitive.

I often find labeling in general very difficult when it comes to music. If I had a penny for each "This band is X" / "No way, they're Y!" discussion, I'd have... um, masses of pennies. Some terms, like New Wave, have become a catch-all of sorts, but I've seen bitter arguments on whether that particular band is New Wave or Post-Punk, and the like. (Post-Punk is a weird label anyway -- I mean, isn't technically everything after the 1970s "after" punk?)

Most sources I've read seem to agree that the New Romantics movement was more about style than about music, meaning "style over substance", meaning in less polite words "a bunch of airheads messing around with mommy's make-up". And, well, that certainly is insulting.
Some people claim that there is no New Romantic "sound" anyway, only the look and fashion. I wouldn't agree, but I also find it hard to pin it down exactly because at some point I always reach the territory of personal taste. If, for me, New Romantic includes a certain -- how do I put it -- aloofness and coldness in sound, despite the layers of stylish pop on top, then I'll automatically exclude certain bands because I find them too much forgettable sugary pop while others will say those are New Romantic icons. (From that perspective, the term "Futurism" sounds certainly more appealing to me.)

Which is a very long-winded way to say "Hi, music labels traumatize me, I try to follow the discussions and after three paragraphs my eyes glaze over, despite my huge interest in music as such. I'm sorry".

As for Japan -- I'd say they predated and influenced it and then got labeled after the fact.

P.S.:

Japan themselves always fervently rejected the "New Romantic" label, but then again, I don't know of any band who actually described themselves as New Romantics

Kind of like Bauhaus and a lot of other bands never were goth?

[sisterlondon]

Hey, I was a new Romantic gal and was proud of it!

[Melaszka]

Thinking more about it, I'd say that perhaps there was a New Romantic sound - I associate the term with bands that explored the new possibilities that rapidly developing synthesiser technology brought in the late 70s/early 80s, but without abandoning the traditional guitar-based sound. But in 95% of cases it was a description applied after the event, not by the bands themselves, who weren't trying to be New Romantics.

As opposed to futurism, which was a deliberate, conscious movement that tried to develop a whole new sound from synthesisers, moving away from traditional instruments.

I'm probably using these terms completely inaccurately, though.

[mikaels]

I was a New Romantic, and proud of it, and I would definitely label at least QL and GTP as New Romantic albums, although David might not agree. But then again, for me, the term is positive, has always been. They have a timeless, romantic, slightly sad but inventive quality, that only Peter Godwin (another unjustly forgotten hero), in his best moments, could match.
Duran Duran, while good at times, could only dream of coming close...

[PHSSLL]

to quote a perticular Favorite NUMAN track "MORAL"

"new romatics are oh so boring i could swear ive been there once or twice before "

I never thought of myself as a new romantic just a fan of progressive music/arrtists including japan,numan,human league, the associates to name a few but if it had to be pigeon holed i would rather be labeled a new romantic than a pop fan not that it really matters

[japanfan]

Sylvian was a new romantic fashion icon in that he with a few others pioneered the look. So in that sense i think its a positive term.

[The Nightporter]

When talking of Japan, I never associated them full with the New Romantic phase, mainly because it put them in the same pot as the likes of 'Spandau Ballet' and 'Duran Duran'. To my tender ears, 'Japan' were streets ahead of that....

Myself and my fellow Japan devotees of the time preferred the term 'Cold Wave' as opposed to 'New Romantics'.........it just fitted the band better.....

[neonico]

i think the term new romantic is a load of ...........

i would put it into the term experimental look at thomas dolby or robert wight they came through this period and now have amazing musik.

the only musik for me that was interesting at this time was experimental like kraftwerk and tangerine dream.

and by the way i spend a whole day with the members of kraftwerk they were funny had a great sense of humour and just nice people.


ok i was a child.

[Q Quarters]

Was a "New Romantic" myself around 80/81 but followed Japan from "Adolescent Sex" onwards before the term NR even exicted. Never thought of them as NRs, indeed more "artrock". Of course Mr. Sylvian was a NR fashion icon, but so was Mr. Bowie or Mr. Ferry. And let's be honest, both artists influenced Japan very much..