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The 100 Greatest “New Wave” songs 1. Everybody Wants to Rule the World-Tears for Fears (1 Viewer)

16. “Tainted Love” Soft Cell (1981, from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret) 

https://youtu.be/ZcyCQLewj10

Don’t touch me please I cannot stand the way you TEASE 

One of the most memorable covers of all time. The song was written and recorded in 1964 but Marc Almond makes it his own with his amazing, distinctive vocals. (And of course he inserts another great cover, this one of “Where Did Our Love Go?”, in the middle of the song.) 

 
El Floppo said:
Makes the anticipation of the next 15 equal parts interesting and ruh-roh considering the absence of this heavy-hitter.
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The way things have gone, one would think White Wedding and New Year’s Day will be coming soon. Also probably something else from Bowie (Heroes or Ashes To Ashes). Would also guess Major Tom, 99 Luftballoons, and Video Killed The Radio Star. Mexican Radio? Kajagoogoo? Radio Radio? Melt With You? Relax? Take On Me? Cars? Pop Musik? Psycho Killer? Heart Of Glass? You’re All I’ve Got Tonight? Still waiting on a Fixx song. Probably Every Breath You Take. Maybe Our House or Just Can’t Get Enough. Probably one or two head scratchers or something way unexpected. 

 
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Anarchy99 said:
The way things have gone, one would think White Wedding and New Year’s Day will be coming soon. Also probably something else from Bowie (Heroes or Ashes To Ashes). Would also guess Major Tom, 99 Luftballoons, and Video Killed The Radio Star. Mexican Radio? Melt With You? Relax? Take On Me? Cars? Psycho Killer? Heart Of Glass? You’re All I’ve Got Tonight? Still waiting on a Fixx song. Probably Every Breath You Take. Maybe Our House or Just Can’t Get Enough. Probably one or two head scratchers or something way unexpected. 
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He seems to like the police and Blondie a lot. 

I don't see a fixx tune at this point. Or even a bunch you've listed.

But melt with you has to be there.

 
first 10 songs played on MTV

1  "Video Killed the Radio Star" - The Buggles

2  "You Better Run" - Pat Benatar

3  "She Won't Dance With Me" - Rod Stewart

4  "You Better You Bet" - The Who

5  "Little Suzi's on the Up" - Ph.D.

6  "We Don't Talk Anymore" - Cliff Richard

7  "Brass in Pocket" - The Pretenders

8  "Time Heals" - Todd Rundgren

9  *"Take It on the Run" - REO Speedwagon - This was the first concert video to be aired on MTV, from REO Speedwagon's Live Infidelity home video release. The video was interrupted after 12 seconds due to technical difficulties. The technical difficulty moment contains only a blank black screen with a 200 Hz tone for a few seconds, before going back to MTV's studio.

10  "Rockin' the Paradise" - Styx

 
timschochet said:
16. “Tainted Love” Soft Cell (1981, from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret) 

https://youtu.be/ZcyCQLewj10

Don’t touch me please I cannot stand the way you TEASE 

One of the most memorable covers of all time. The song was written and recorded in 1964 but Marc Almond makes it his own with his amazing, distinctive vocals. (And of course he inserts another great cover, this one of “Where Did Our Love Go?”, in the middle of the song.) 
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There it is. 

 
Sad face. I started a thread devoted to the first day of MTV several years ago where I listed everything they played the first 24 hours. Looks like it got purged.

 
I have heard Tainted Love enough over the years to where I know it pretty well, even though I don't think I've ever actually turned it on myself (via YT, mp3, etc.); it was always just playing somewhere, like the radio or MTV.  A good song, but not one I ever need to hear. 

 
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timschochet said:
16. “Tainted Love” Soft Cell (1981, from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret) 

https://youtu.be/ZcyCQLewj10

Don’t touch me please I cannot stand the way you TEASE 

One of the most memorable covers of all time. The song was written and recorded in 1964 but Marc Almond makes it his own with his amazing, distinctive vocals. (And of course he inserts another great cover, this one of “Where Did Our Love Go?”, in the middle of the song.) 
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If you are familiar with the history this has got to be one of the flukiest paths ever for a song to become a hit record.

In 1965 Ed Cobb (of The Four Preps of Santa Catalina fame) was asked to produce Gloria Jones first single My Bad Boy’s Comin’ Home. They needed a B side and since no one had a better idea, by default, Cobb went with a song he wrote for The Standells (who he later managed) and said they had passed on Tainted Love (which the band subsequently claimed was never offered to them). Both sides of this single were a commercial flop.

Anyway, fast forward to 1976, where a British DJ named Richard Searling found a copy of Jones’ song and started playing it in “Northern Soul” clubs in the U.K. The hard-hitting song became quite popular in the clubs, leading Jones to rerecord it in 1976.

The 1976 version (produced by Marc Bolan) had a coked up frenetic feel to it but added a couple elements:

https://blog.discmakers.com/2019/06/unlocking-a-hit-song-soft-cells-tainted-love/

The re-make adds one of the most enduring hooks of the song: “Sometimes I feel I have to” [bam! bam!] “run away…” Also, there’s an added dynamic shift in the “Once I ran to you” section, thanks to the drawn-out horn notes.
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It was this version that Marc Almond heard while he was working in the cloak room of a disco and ran up to the DJ wanting to know if it was Jones' recording, before asking to tape it.

Some years later, after Almond formed Soft Cell with Dave Ball, they decided to add some cover songs to their live set. They settled on Black Sabbath's Paranoid and Tainted Love (which edged out The Night by The Four Seasons since they had seen Gloria Jones perform it as an opening act for T. Rex). The song also won out over the other two when they needed to do a single for Phonogram.

Soft Cell added their own changes to the song (more from the above link):

Soft Cell introduced three key elements to the song. First, and most crucially, they slowed the song down, which not only gives the music a chance to breathe, it adds an extra bounce to the melody. At this tempo, the song finally swings. Slowing it down also adds a certain menace to the music. While the second Jones’ version might have sounded coke-fueled, Soft Cell’s version is much more paranoid.

Second, they added that iconic, syncopated beeping G note. It’s the first thing you hear, and it comes in just ahead of the downbeat. It’s amazing, but less than one second into the song and your ears can already pick up that this is a hit. So critical is that note, it became the focus of this famous Spike-Jones-directed Levi’s commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVY04NQUpxk

Third, they add dynamics. During the pre-chorus “Once I ran to you” section, they build up the dramatic tension by raising the background notes (You can barely hear this in Jones’ original, but in the Bolan-Jones version, that background note is held throughout the first half of that section.) Thus, when we finally get to the chorus in the cover, it’s much more of a release than in either of the first two versions.

Other things that make Soft Cell’s version so great:

- Even though the hook was added in Jones’ remake, it’s not highlighted nearly as much as it is in Soft Cell’s version. The band (or producer) rightly made this an essential part of the song. I defy you to listen to this version and not hit something during that bit. It’s just as irresistible as the bum-bum-bum section of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.”

- The main riff in this version is much more subdued than in previous releases, but I think it’s more effective and here it adds to the song’s menacing atmosphere, rather than being the focal point of the song.
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With all of that going for it, no wonder the song spent 43 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100.
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Amazing how many new wave hits were first 1960s tunes that in many cases not nearly as popular in their time.

 
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timschochet said:
nothing that came out post 1985 was considered. I know that eliminates a lot of good material...
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Unfortunately that rules out “Under The Milky Way” by The Church.

Came out a few years after the original New Wave era dissipated, but the sound fits right in with the previous era.

IMO one of the best songs of the decade, irrespective of genre.

 
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zamboni said:
Unfortunately that rules out “Under The Milky Way” by The Church.

Came out a few years after the original New Wave era dissipated, but the sound fits right in with the previous era.

IMO oneof the best songs of the decade, irrespective of genre.
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I'll take talent over time period every time.

 
zamboni said:
Unfortunately that rules out “Under The Milky Way” by The Church.

Came out a few years after the original New Wave era dissipated, but the sound fits right in with the previous era.

IMO one of the best songs of the decade, irrespective of genre.
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100%

that whole album is excellent and was glued into my car's tape deck for weeks. 

 
15. “Psycho Killer” Talking Heads (1977, from Talking Heads: 1977)

https://youtu.be/O52jAYa4Pm8

This band pretty much introduced New Wave with this song, which also introduced the world to Tina Weymouth and the funkiest bass line ever. Probably my favorite song ever about a serial killer (although I do love “Midnight Rambler”.) 

 
though i have a top-flight memory tied up in this song, that i've related here too many times already...

from "Talking Heads favorite song" thread, 6-22-19:

I've told before about being the only human being west of the Mississippi with a copy of Talking Heads '77. My sendoff party from Boston media was built around a Heads/Ramone concert (had little idea who either band was) and i was given albums bought at the show. i moved to a commune in NM to be w my HS sweetheart & chill, unaware that only one of the mining shacks they had homesteaded had power. We would have naked sockhops at the main house and somehow "77 made it onto the turntable and, though the girls would sqwinch their nose at the freaky stuff, we fashioned a dance called the Psycho Chicken (bucbucbucBAWWWW, bucbuc bucbuc bawBAWWWW) out of Psycho Killer. Ah, naked hippie chicks make every memory better!
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....this is not New Wave, just very good punk

 
Leroy Hoard said:
zamboni said:
Unfortunately that rules out “Under The Milky Way” by The Church.

Came out a few years after the original New Wave era dissipated, but the sound fits right in with the previous era.

IMO oneof the best songs of the decade, irrespective of genre.
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I'll take talent over time period every time.
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I have a feeling there are a lot of great tunes that would fit the new wave genre post 1985.

 
timschochet said:
15. “Psycho Killer” Talking Heads (1977, from Talking Heads: 1977)

https://youtu.be/O52jAYa4Pm8

This band pretty much introduced New Wave with this song, which also introduced the world to Tina Weymouth and the funkiest bass line ever. Probably my favorite song ever about a serial killer (although I do love “Midnight Rambler”.) 
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I have been waiting for this song....hoping I could be able to link to the hilarious parody:

Psycho Chicken by The Fools.  :lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zm2sRYfcXk

 
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Due to Tims countdown, I watched a short documentary on the talking heads the other day. According to their manager (or record guy who signed them) he came up with the term new wave to dissociate the heads from the punk world bc people thought punk was evil. And it worked

At least that is according to him. 

 
AcerFC said:
Due to Tims countdown, I watched a short documentary on the talking heads the other day. According to their manager (or record guy who signed them) he came up with the term new wave to dissociate the heads from the punk world bc people thought punk was evil. And it worked

At least that is according to him. 
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Nice. Never heard that one before. Thanks for sharing. 
This thread also sent me down a “Smiths live” YouTube rabbit hole last week. One of the few of my favorite bands that I never saw live. 

 
Psycho Killer is a good tune.  I found it pretty underwhelming when I first heard it (after decades of only knowing their 80's hits that got played on MTV), but it grew on me and I like it now. 

As for favorite song about a serial killer, mine is the 23-minute song Raider II by Steven Wilson, which is about Dennis Rader, the BTK killer.  Seeing it performed live in full a few years ago was surreal.  But it's not new wave by any stretch of the imagination, so I will digress...

 
14. “Our Lips Are Sealed” The Go-Gos (1981, from Beauty and the Beat) 

https://youtu.be/r3kQlzOi27M

They’re so cute in this video. Belinda with that ribbon in her hair, Jane sitting on top of the car for her solo....it was so iconic because it was so new and fresh and happy. It’s also a great song. 

 
Brony said:
Great tune. I really like Jane Wiedlin's stripped down acoustic version of this 
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Big fan of this one too... And a surprise to me this high.

Fun Boy Three's cover became my definitive version for it though...even though I like the original.

 
timschochet said:
14. “Our Lips Are Sealed” The Go-Gos (1981, from Beauty and the Beat) 

https://youtu.be/r3kQlzOi27M

They’re so cute in this video. Belinda with that ribbon in her hair, Jane sitting on top of the car for her solo....it was so iconic because it was so new and fresh and happy. It’s also a great song. 
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This song is a guilty pleasure for me. love it.

 
El Floppo said:
Big fan of this one too... And a surprise to me this high.

Fun Boy Three's cover became my definitive version for it though...even though I like the original.
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This is a favorite of mine. 

 
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