Around 1979London / United Kingdom

New Romantic

Also known as New Romantics, New Romantic

A London-born style movement that fused post-punk ambition with synth-pop shine and an outsized sense of performance.

Origins and context

Documented as emerging from the Blitz club scene in Covent Garden, London, in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

LondonUnited Kingdom

The sound

Characteristics

Synthesizers
Drum machines
Bass guitar
Electric guitar
Club-oriented rhythms

How to listen

Mood

Glamorous, nocturnal, danceable

History

The label grew out of London’s Blitz club scene around 1979–1980, where Steve Strange, Rusty Egan, and a circle of art-school regulars turned dressing up into a kind of nightlife manifesto. Writers and scene insiders have traced the movement to that Covent Garden club culture, where Bowie, Roxy Music, electronic pop, and a recession-era hunger for style mixed into something that quickly spilled beyond the room and into the charts. As the look and sound spread, bands like Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran became the movement’s most visible faces. Their early records helped define the sleek, synthesized side of the era, and official artist pages still frame those releases as central to their rise.