New Wave Albums: 1990

Psychedelic Paul wrote: siLLy puPPy wrote: mellotronwave wrote: Still New Wave in 1990 ? Yep, especially in Eastern Europe. Here's a more comprehensive list than what's presented for the poll. https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/1990/g:new%2dwave/ On this poll Depeche Mode all the way. Violator is one of the best albums of all time I don't know any of those 68 albums on RYM's list of international New Wave albums from 1990, and it doesn't even include Depeche Mode's Violator album.

That's because the album Violator is tagged with Synthpop as its main genre and Darkwave, Alternative Dance as its secondary ones. It's the site's second highest ranked album for 1990 overall, by the way, with a 4.03 / 5.0 from 25,252 ratings. I tend to think of it as more of an alternative rock album, and I do think it had shifted from New Wave.

By the way, my son asked me this morning why I am so genre-focused when it comes to music. I didn't say it, but partially it's because otherwise I may run out of things to discuss, or have significantly less to comment on, at this forum.

Edited by Logan - June 21 2023 at 10:35

^ I told him much the same thing, and related it to other classifications. Discussing genre is one of those issues that I do consider to a bread-and-butter type topic for the forum here. But then these are Prog "Archives" and it is said that nomenclature is the bane of the archivist. It's common for music and other art not to fit into tidy little boxes.

I've heard some say that we should get rid of labels altogether, which I find a more than inconvenient and frankly bizarre notion.

By the way, it's those gothic and darkwave qualities that make it so special to me.

Edited by Logan - June 21 2023 at 11:05

siLLy puPPy wrote: ^ synthpop in the 80s is considered new wave. Depeche Mode technically were new wave but were really their own thing. The darkwave and gothic influences kept them a bit out of the new wave thing As far as being genre focused, we have to have some way of navigating the vast array of music that's been released in the last 100 years. Very much like biology, you need to have things in loose categories just to be able to operate. Otherwise genres are simply nomenclature tags that mean little to the actual quality of the music at hand.

siLLy puPPy wrote: ^ yeah i'm a huge Depeche Mode fan myself. I went on a marathon a few months back and listened to every album from the debut to the 2017 album "Spirit." I have went out and bought the newer albums because i hadn't kept up and was amazed that some of the newer albums like "Delta Machine" are excellent. Genres are very relevant for those of us who consume large quantities of music. If someone chooses to ignore such things then that's their prerogative just like you can ignore the fact a whale is a mammal and a peacock is a bird but if you want to comprehend the deeper connections of the musical world then genre tagging is absolutely essential. It's a system science approach that allows a deeper and smoother navigation into large databases. For those who ignore these larger systems, they are missing out!

Agree...

And from a personal note, as long as my pharmacist doesn't decide to ignore labels altogether as I'm on a few things right now and I would rather not get random pills.... I used the pharmacist example to the PAer who asserted that labels should be done away with altogether. Now maybe he meant music specifically, he was unclear on that (he followed a label by joining "Prog" archives perhaps), and maybe since he doesn't like labels, music is a much more encompassing term to him which include pharmaceuticals and crocodiles. A world without labels would be not only a much less satisfying place, but a much more dangerous place.

Psychedelic Paul wrote: siLLy puPPy wrote: ^ yeah i'm a huge Depeche Mode fan myself. I went on a marathon a few months back and listened to every album from the debut to the 2017 album "Spirit." I have went out and bought the newer albums because i hadn't kept up and was amazed that some of the newer albums like "Delta Machine" are excellent. Genres are very relevant for those of us who consume large quantities of music. If someone chooses to ignore such things then that's their prerogative just like you can ignore the fact a whale is a mammal and a peacock is a bird but if you want to comprehend the deeper connections of the musical world then genre tagging is absolutely essential. It's a system science approach that allows a deeper and smoother navigation into large databases. For those who ignore these larger systems, they are missing out! I live and breathe music genres! My entire CD collection (3,200 at the last count) is divided into roughly 25 primary music genres.

Do you let your ears judge the genre (based on what you have learned over a lifetime), and how much do you judge the album's genre compared to judging the artist or artist's oeuvre?

 1990: ABC - Absolutely - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrpyDacBCh7CnPOWKgNs9x0CtHBfPPCce

 1990: Depeche Mode - Violator - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mHs4cUqzH65iMdDBiAQNn44HxkHSy98Uk

 1990: Pretenders - Packed! - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n72YmbrFEMFuSG_z8YjWk01MLmV_iSTWk