80’s NEW WAVE

What came first—the 80s new wave obsession or the running habit that makes you think too much? Let me tell you, they're both attempts at the same thing: outrunning yourself. Never works. But here's the thing about this playlist: it's not some Greatest Hits of MTV compilation. This is new wave as it actually existed—messy, regional, genre-bleeding, before anyone agreed what new wave even meant.

It opens with "How Soon Is Now?"—obviously. The Smiths, 1985, Johnny Marr's tremolo guitar that sounds like loneliness has a pulse. You're half a mile in when that slide guitar hits and you realize this isn't going to be a fun jog. This is going to make you think about every person who didn't call back. Then it pivots hard—Misfits' "Hybrid Moments," Glenn Danzig doing horror punk that's secretly a love song. That's the blueprint right there: new wave wasn't one sound, it was about ten different scenes all getting called the same thing by people who worked at record stores. Which I do. So I'd know.

Top 5 ways this playlist captures what new wave actually was, not what VH1 told you it was:

1. The Smiths into Misfits is geographically accurate—UK post-punk melancholy straight into New Jersey horror punk, both on indie labels, both called "new wave" by people who didn't know better.

2. "Rock the Casbah" next to "Mirror in the Bathroom" shows the ska invasion nobody talks about—The Clash stealing from The Beat who were stealing from Jamaican rocksteady, all of it lumped under "new wave" in 1982.

3. The Cure's "Just Like Heaven" is the exact moment when goth kids realized they were allowed to write pop songs—Robert Smith on Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, still wearing lipstick but now on the radio.

4. "Ghost Town" by The Specials is 2 Tone ska as protest music, Coventry unemployment rates translated into minor key dread—this is what new wave meant in the UK when Thatcher was dismantling everything.

5. Violent Femmes' "Gone Daddy Gone" into Operation Ivy's "Sound System" is American new wave—Milwaukee folk punk meets Bay Area ska punk, both lo-fi, both too weird for mainstream, both exactly what was happening in 1983 and 1989 when nobody was looking.

Here's what happens around mile two: "I Melt with You" hits and you remember that Modern English recorded this as a song about nuclear apocalypse and it became a prom theme. That's new wave in one track—darkness packaged as pop, or maybe pop revealing its darkness. You're cruising now, INXS doing stadium-ready jangle pop, then Concrete Blonde's "Still In Hollywood" which is Johnette Napolitano writing about Los Angeles like it's a relationship that's actively destroying you. Which it probably is.

The back half gets weirder—X's "Los Angeles," 1980, the Slash Records proto-punk that predates half of what came before it on this playlist. That's the thing about new wave: the timeline's all wrong. Pixies' "Wave Of Mutilation" UK Surf version is 1989, which means new wave ate grunge before grunge existed. And it closes with Nirvana covering "Love Buzz," a Dutch band from 1969, recorded for Sub Pop in 1988, Kurt Cobain proving that new wave was just punk that admitted it liked melodies.

You finish your run and you're back where you started—sweaty, overthinking, no closer to answers. But you've just traced the actual geography of new wave: UK post-punk desperation, American regional scenes, ska and rocksteady imports, horror punk from New Jersey, college rock from Boston. It wasn't a sound. It was a moment when everything broke open and labels didn't know what to call anything anymore, so they called it all new wave and let us sort it out later.

I'm still sorting it out. The playlist won't solve anything. Neither will the run. But for thirty-two minutes, you get to hear what the 80s actually sounded like when you weren't watching MTV—regional, strange, genre-fluid, before anyone decided what was cool. That tremolo guitar on "How Soon Is Now?" still sounds like every unanswered call. Some things don't change.