Intro

Hello, and welcome to New Wave Beat. I'm your host, Jason D'Orazio. Today, we're going to go over some songs from the year 1984.

Okay, now that we talked about the news, let's get into some new wave songs from 1984. 1984 was a year where new wave songs continued to make strong showings in the charts, both by newly-minted musicians and also more established acts.

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“99 red balloons get released into the sky, which the Americans and Soviets each perceive as an attack by the other side. The result: nuclear holocaust."

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Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want To Have Fun

We will kick off 1984 with a discussion of Cyndi Lauper's🔖✔ Girls Just Want To Have Fun. Cyndi Lauper was the frontwoman for the oldies-inspired band Blue Angel before deciding to strike out on her own in 1984. Her debut album, She's So Unusual, was a big smash, and contained the hit, Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

Originally a Mike Hazard song from 1979, Lauper refashioned Girls Just Want To Have Fun as a feminist anthem. The rapid synthesizer intro makes it quickly recognizable. A four-note keyboard rift forms the backbone of the sections before the verses.

Lauper has a distinct, endearing singing voice, which is influenced by her heavy Queens accent. The music and vocals are both full of vigor. The lyrics are pretty straightforward. Lauper is telling her parents that she's a free spirit, and also that girls like her want to have fun and be noticed. "I want to be the one to walk in the sun", Lauper explains. The video is as iconic as they come, garnering over half a billion views on YouTube. In it, Lauper's character rebels against her mom and dad, the latter played by wrestler Lou Albano. She then marshals her friends and they dance across New York City. The video ends with the gang taking the party back to Lauper's house. Lauper has an irreverent fashion in the video that makes it all the more distinctive. It's a real feel-good video. Girls Just Want To Have Fun hit number two both in the United States and as an export to the UK. After the She's So Unusual album, Lauper had a few more hits but, unfortunately, could not keep up fame-wise with the likes of contemporary Madonna. Lauper started to become more underground in the '90s, but kept on making records and still does to this day.

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Album Discographies & Visualizations

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Thompson Twins - Hold Me Now

Next up is Hold Me Now by The Thompson Twins. The Thompson Twins, who are actually a trio of unrelated individuals, debuted in 1981 and had some hits in the UK, but they were not well known in United States until their fourth album in 1984 dubbed Into The Gap, which contained Hold Me Now.

For Hold Me Now, the keyboard intro with soft drums is simple but memorable. The melody is also basic and not as ambitious as some of the other songs off Into The Gap. Nevertheless, the song has a warm bass line by Tom Bailey that is pretty good. Overall, I would say the song's main strength is the emotional vocals, also by Bailey, which really tug at the heartstrings. The falsetto backup vocals in the chorus by member Joe Leeway add some spice to the song. I believe Hold Me Now is about a relationship that is on the rocks. The line, "Look at our life now, tattered and torn," in context of the song, suggests that. Nevertheless, I believe the singer wants to reconcile and be comforted as implied by the song title and the phrase, "Stay with me." It's kind of a sad song, if you think about it. The video is not quite as iconic as Girls Just Want To Have Fun, as it consists solely of the band performing in front of a blue backdrop that turns red near the song's climax. There are split-screen effects, and the band plays various instruments. Hold Me Now is good for a top 10 position in both the US and UK. The Thompson Twins had some more modest hits in the '80s, including King For A Day, but stopped making albums after the early '90s when quite a few other new wave bands hit the skids. Tom Bailey still tours, playing Thompson Twins songs.

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Gene Wilder - Break My Stride

Let's keep on moving with Matthew Wilder's Break My Stride. The native New Yorker Wilder was part of the folk rock duo Matthew and Peter in the early '70s and came back a decade later as a solo artist with a quite different synth-oriented sound. His debut in 1983 contained the three-minute pop gem Break My Stride. A bouncy repetitive synth forms the basis of the song.

An exclamatory, "Oh," and a subsequent key change after the bridge is a testament to the pop leanings of Break My Stride. Wilder's singing is enthusiastic. Both the singing and the melody perhaps have a bit of a reggae bend to them. The effervescent melody and vocals are countered by the content of the song, which is about breaking up. The choruses are from the ex-girlfriend's point of view. She wants to put the relationship behind her fast, hence the line, "Ain't nothing going to break my stride, and I've got to keep on moving." By song's end, Wilder borrows what she said and tries to move on himself. So even though the song talks about a relationship breaking up, to many it sounds inspirational, telling the listeners that sometimes change is for the best and that one can be resilient. Wilder really wanted to have a video for Break My Stride, but unfortunately it never materialized. Despite the lack of MTV love, Break My Stride was a top 10 hit in United States and Britain.

Wilder was truly a one-hit wonder🔖✔, but he rebounded, much like the characters in Break My Stride. In the '90s, Wilder had success producing🔖✔ new wave-influenced band No Doubt's multi-platinum Tragic Kingdom album. Wilder even got nominated for a Grammy, Golden Globe, and Oscar for soundtrack work. As for Break My Stride itself, it has been heavily covered and sampled.

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Depeche Mode - People Are People

People Are People is the next song I will discuss, an an early classic by Depeche Mode🔖✔. This British band started out in 1981 with a peppy synth-pop sound that grew slowly darker throughout the early '80s. Their fourth album, Some Great Reward, lived up to its name and included their first American hit in People Are People.

I can't understand. What makes a man hate another man? Help me understand.

One of the hallmarks of the song is the machine-sounding synths and sound effects, something that Depeche Mode was experimenting with in the early '80s and that industrial musicians used later on.

David Gahan sings in a higher register than his usual baritone, with Martin Gore providing backup vocals as a good counterpoint. I think the lyrics are a call against general bigotry. The narrator is on the receiving end of someone's hate, even though the two people have never met. There are some good lines in there, like, "It just takes a while to travel from your head to your fist," referring to human decency. The video for People Are People features the band reluctantly manning a warship while singing the lyrics. The band is decked out in black, which in part made them favored by goth fans. These shots of Depeche Mode are interspersed with black and white war footage. Depeche Mode is said to be embarrassed by this song. It's not the darkest or most subtle song they have done, for sure, but I still think it's solid. People Are People hit 13 in the US charts, and was a number four in the UK. It was their biggest hit of the '80s. Depeche Mode had a career revival in the '90s at a time where many other '80s acts struggled mightily. And they got nominated to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, to boot. They're still making new music and playing at arenas. Check out their stuff.

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Nena - 99 Luftballons

Okay, let's end our look at 1984 with 99 Luftballons by Nena. Nena debuted in 1982, scoring several hits in German-speaking countries. In 1984, Nena's 99 Luftballons almost cracked the top of the US charts at two, even though the song's lyrics are in German. It goes to show that new wave allowed for diverse songs and points of view. Falco's🔖✔ Rock Me Amadeus was the only German-language song to perform better. Perhaps more on that song in another episode. Nena released an English version of 99 Luftballons, but the German is usually preferred by music fans.

For the intro, Nena starts singing over a slow synth.

And the song deliberately builds energy and tempo. Nena sings with good intensity and inflection. The guitar and drums during the verses have a punk energy to them, which, along with splashes of high-pitched organs, reminds me of an earlier new wave song. Maybe something Blondie🔖✔ would've recorded. The ending is eerie and matches the content. About the content, the song is a devastating critique of the Cold War🔖✔ between the Americans and Soviets that dominated post-World War II politics. 99 red balloons get released into the sky, which each side perceives as an attack by the other side. The result, nuclear holocaust. There are some cool references to UFOs and Star Trek's Captain Kirk, for what it's worth. The video mostly consists of Nena and her band performing. There are also shots of Nena walking across the barren landscape with smoke bomb powder behind her. Pretty prosaic at first, but things get interesting about two thirds of the way through as nuclear bombs go off in the background. I gotta say, the band is pretty calm during all this. The band Nena had quite a few albums after 99 Luftballons, but would not make another hit in United States. More about Nena here🔖✔.

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Outro

And that's a wrap on our 1984 retrospective. Please join me next week. This is Jason D'Orazio at New Wave Beat wishing you a great week. Talk to you later. Like this article? The Vault has bonus writeups on five articles.

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