The Jam were at the forefront of two musical movements at once in late-'70s England--punk and the mod revival. While the young trio posessed just as much brashness and raw energy as the Sex Pistols or the Clash, they also had the pop smarts and soul …

Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith's debut album as Tears For Fears appeared smack dab in the middle of the '80s UK synth-pop invasion, but it was no mere pop trifle. THE HURTING is full of sophisticated production and accomplished songwriting, using the …

Squeeze first came to fame as part of the late-'70s/early-'80s British new wave influx. Their songwriting skills immediately set them apart from the crowd, with Chris Difford and Glen Tillbrook drawing comparisons to Lennon and McCartney. Though the …

Talk Talk began as an early-1980s synth-pop band in the style of Duran Duran. It didn't take long for the group's aesthetic ambitions to come to the fore, though. By the mid-'80s, their music was full of jazz-tinged ambience and extended instrumental…

Despite the band's name, the Love Generation touches that brought the Psychedelic Furs great acclaim came only after they'd established their initial style. Theirs was a dark, swirling sound that mixed Bowie-ish art-rock and post-punk guitars with Ri…

Not content with fronting two of England's most influential bands (the Jam and the Style Council) in the '70s and '80s, Paul Weller began a solo career in the '90s. While the influences he'd drawn on in the past (soul, '60s mod) were still evident, t…

Born in the early 1980s out of the ashes of U.K. post-punk pioneers Joy Division, New Order became one of the first electro-pop bands to find mainstream success in the US. Their single "Blue Monday" was a landmark in dance music, and subsequent recor…

Depeche Mode (French for "hurried fashion") was one of the first and best of the British synth-pop bands, combining breathless, melodic pop with perky electronics. With main songwriter Vince Clarke's departure for Yaz, Martin Gore took the reigns, an…

As part of Britain's short-lived New Romantic movement of the early '80s, Spandau Ballet initially combined futurist electro-pop with disco and post-punk influences. They found their greatest success, though, with the adoption of a blue-eyed soul sou…

Led by depressive pop prince Robert Smith, the Cure have taken their legions of fans on a journey from post-punk to gothic to new wave to art rock, stopping only for refills of hairspray along the way. An amazing band both live and in the studio, the…

ABC was the epitome of the flashy "new pop" sound that dominated the British charts in the first half of the '80s. The band's roots lay in the Sheffield electro-pop group Vice Versa, which shifted gears when singer/songwriter Martin Fry joined, movin…

Madness took its cue from other British ska revivalists such as the Specials and the Selecter, but where those bands took aim at social issues, Madness went in for goofy fun. In the early days of MTV, the group had several stateside hits, but nothing…

At the dawn of the 1980s, Duran Duran was part of Britain's "futurist" or "new romantic" scene, which merged glam-rock attitude with disco beats and synthesizers to form an intensely fashion-conscious variant on new wave. With their good looks and po…

Along with Teardrop Explodes and Wah! Heat, Echo & the Bunnymen were part of the early-1980s Liverpool scene that was somewhat misleadingly dubbed "neo-psychedelic." While the Bunnymen bore elements of the Doors' dark, mysterious sound and decidedly …

Formed in the mid-1980s, the British electropop dance duo Pet Shop Boys neatly summed up the age of WALL STREET player Gordon Gecko's greed-is-good dictum and Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics policy in one of their early singles, "Opportunities…

Formed in Beckenham, Kent, England in 1980, Haircut 100 began on a part-time basis with a line-up comprising Nick Heyward (b. 20 May 1961, Beckenham, Kent, England; vocals), Les Nemes (b. 5 December 1960, Croydon, Surrey, England; bass) and Graham Jo…

The Beat (dubbed English Beat in the US due to conflict with an American band) began as part of Britain's early-1980s second-wave ska movement, which was also influenced by punk. Eventually, the band expanded to include pop, R&B, and other influences…

In its crude initial formation in 1976, Siouxsie & the Banshees consisted of members of the "Bromley contingent," a group of notorious Sex Pistols groupies. In various permutations, the band survived for almost 20 years. Featuring core members Siouxs…

This Athens band's initial mix of Velvet Underground strum, Byrds-like Rickenbacker jangle, and charismatically oblique singing, became the sound of the 1980s as legions of bands followed suit. But even as imitators codified R.E.M.'s approach into th…

The origins of this UK synthesizer pop act were much less conventional than their chart material might suggest. Their name derived from the Tin Tin cartoon books of Hergé. Formed in 1977, the line-up featured Tom Bailey (b. 18 January 1956, Halifax, …