Customer Reviews

Essential New Wave Hits

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While not all tracks on this compilation are New Wave nor essential, or even hits, it's a solid (and compact at 10 songs) collection. The selection of tracks is a smart and fun sampling of the new sounds of pop music circa the early 1980's. There's the ususal suspects found on many 80's compilations like "Tempted", "Cars", "I Ran" and "Pop Muzik", as well as a couple of Top 40 favorites with "What I Like About You" and "My Sharona". The Wide Boy Awake addition, "Chicken Outlaw", is an upitty ditty - filled with hand claps and mandolin - not easily found on other 80's collections, a relative obscurity. The track I appreciate most is "Favourite Shirts" by Haircut One Hundred. They are usually represented on compilations by their more well known "Love Plus One", but 'Shirts' is just as good or better and its inclusion greatly increases the overall value of this CD. At the time of this review this CD can be found for as little as 1 US dollar - it's definately worth it.

If you know that lyric, you'll love this CD. This is by no means great music performed by superior talent, but the tunes are a lot of bouncy fun and if you were young at the time, you'll enjoy it. Tunes like "What I Like About You," "My Sharona," "Whip It," and "Pop Muzik" (the latter Eurorap tune curiously beat out "Rapper's Delight" and "King Tim III," the first rap records, only by a few months) are the kind of delightfully mindless songs that make you want to get on the dance floor and act as unapologetically idiotic as possible. Not great art, but great stuff.