When starting Make It New, I wanted to explore what made New Wave an appealing music genre. Starting with the Pretty in Pink (1986) soundtrack ended up being a perfect starting point, especially as it felt like a culmination of a trend, featuring an impeccable soundtrack full of big names like Suzanne Vega and The Psychedelic Furs. It’s an album that had hits and continues to leave an indelible impact on pop culture. It also features a handful of one hit wonders and artists trapped in time, representing an era with almost too much painful accuracy. Still, if one wanted to get a sense of the sound, it was a decent sampling.
It’s why I’m ecstatic to jump into the rest of the list pulled from this article chronicling the Top 50 New Wave Albums. I’m thrown to the whim of this arbitrary ranking, doing my best to make sense of everything.
Because at the end of the day, I was a kid who spent many afternoons listening to the radio. I still drive around occasionally and find a handful of these songs getting my toes tapping. Among the ones that felt like they slowly went away as I approached adulthood is The Vapors. To put it simply, I think that “Turning Japanese” was an inescapable radio song until the past decade. Many just saw it as a novelty, a goofy song that had no bigger intention than to get people dancing. Judged solely from a structural standpoint, it’s easy to understand why this was a hit. The beat works, the shifts between the verses and chorus are perfectly jerky. If you don’t think about it, it makes sense as a Top 40 hit, a one hit wonder if there ever was one.
This is going to be a recurring theme throughout Make It New. I am going to mostly know these artists because of one song, and odds are that I will talk at length about it. In this case, it’s difficult to not assess The Vapors without talking at length about how much of a fluke “Turning Japanese” was. In all honesty, it feels like a throwaway song compared to the rest of “New Clear Days.” Not in the sense that it’s sonically different, but the tone feels a bit too silly down to its tacky motifs. Every other song deals in some capacity with social issues, reflecting a band clearly ravaged by The Cold War. It’s hard not to hear “Bunkers” and feel their torment.
But “Turning Japanese” is so comical even from the inception. Before diving into why the song maybe hasn’t aged well, it’s important to note what The Vapors had intended. The song was about breaking up with a girl and feeling “alien.” Noteworthy lyrics point out how he’s looking at her picture, as if squinting. Sure there’s something to enjoy about taking a creative twist on heartbreak, but so much of it is dressed up in tacky decisions that it feels simultaneously lazy and triumphantly offensive. Whether it’s the opening guitar riffing an overused melody or the very principle of the song, it’s not particularly sensitive to the matters.
Given that they had intended this song to be their second single to avoid being a one hit wonder is a rather fun irony, especially since the first song “Prisoners” wasn’t even on the U.S. release of “New Clear Days.” Still, for a song that highlighted “no sex, no drugs, no wine, no women…” and calling it dark in a slightly mocking tone didn’t help matters. I understand that the approach to Asian representation in 1980 is different than it is in 2021, but it still comes across as yellow-face, an unfortunate side effect on par with Sixteen Candles’ (1984) infamous Long Duk Dong subplot. It was funny so long as you weren’t Japanese because think about it… The Vapors essentially called a whole race of people alien, tragic, sad, and in some more perverse readings the face you make when you orgasm.
As far as Japanese cultural reverence from outsiders, this is a far cry from Pacific Overtures.
In my personal read, I would just say that the song is misguided in the same way that other entertainment of the time was. Without fair representation, it was difficult for some to see a nuanced portrait of race, that a whole country could be more than puffing up your cheeks and squinting your eyes.
Still, given how The Vapors’ debut album is largely nuanced and culturally aware of the world around them, I find “Turning Japanese” more baffling in hindsight. I get why it stood out, especially since it’s the most esoteric track. However, this comes across as a lark, a song that was never to have deeper meaning or permanence. “New Clear Days” is a fairly solid album worthy of checking out, though the bounciness of this song still sounds out of place. Come to think of it, lyrically it’s out of place. While The Vapors would address heartache and pain, it was often in a more serious context. It still had personality, but nowhere near as abstract to the point of making a mediocre joke.
I believe in part that it’s a bit misguided because of how the album ends. With “Letter from Hiro,” they make a song that addresses something more somber. From the perspective of 1938, the singer recounts over six minutes a correspondence he has with Hiro in Japan. It’s quite an impressive listen, serving the closest to storytelling on the album as he recounts the country’s slow move towards joining World War II. As a closer, it’s epic and stunning, leaving a strong impression of what the album always intended to sound like. There was despair but also hope and empathy built into everything. It wasn’t their poppiest hit, but it sure gave an intriguing allusion to what The Vapors could be had they developed their sound a little more.
To shift back to the beginning, I want to put aside any grievances with them for a while and focus on why this album is a hidden gem. On some level, the songs remind me of The Buzzcocks, whether it be in their guitar tone or vocals piercing over it. I love how the bass is distinctive from the lead guitars and that various bridges have this quick hook that recaptures the listener’s attention. While lyrically they remind me of early Clash records, the sound has this cheekiness that’s fairly standard for New Wave. It’s more on the rock side, but boy do these guys know how to write hooks.
“Spring Collection” starts off the album with an enjoyable melody singing about the perils of fashion, how it consumes identity, and to be cautious of consumerism. It’s the perfect example of how subversive this genre is because while you’re capable of dancing and have a good time, there’s a deeper purpose to the music. They are asking listeners to be more conscious of their surroundings. This is one of the more optimistic songs on the entire album, and it’s a shame that there’s not more like this throughout the album. With hooks like this, there’s a good chance that they would’ve been far more than the “Turning Japanese” band, which has a jarring transition from the first song.
As mentioned, I get the impression that the band is concerned with Cold War politics and enjoys putting them to song. It’s especially clear on the remaining album that begins, most poignantly, with “Cold War” before transitioning into “America” and “Bunkers.” In the song “Trains,” they compare their struggles to live a normal life to being on locomotives, needing to not let the structures become too overbearing. With “News at Ten,” there’s a tragic sense of growing old and staying in at night. It’s such a young, rebellious person’s view of the world where inactivity is demonized. Sure, the rest of the album complements this read, but it’s still so earnest and sincere.
“Somehow” is an enjoyable ditty that features one of the strongest instrumentations on the whole album, including a fun bass riff and vocals that play with optimism. Like every song, there is a want to break through the sadness and find an optimistic future in the wake. So much of the album skewers towards darkness, though it’s hard to fully appreciate when the hooks are this enjoyable, at the ready to make you feel conflicting emotions. That may in fact be the point, where even “Waiting for the Weekend” has this somber undertone at times. It’s a perfect contradiction and one that makes for a perplexing listen.
On some level, “New Clear Days” is an album that’s better than expected. Whereas many would tune in and expect more along the lines of “Turning Japanese,” it’s a fairly complicated look at isolation and Cold War-style panic. There is distress and urgency that I recognize from late-2000s bands like The Dead 60s’ “Riot on the Radio.”
It’s essentially one of the perks of New Wave. It wasn’t always about love and in fact, was often more obsessed with the greater questions of the world – albeit put into more artful texts. The Vapors aren’t the greatest band in terms of transcending sound and meaning, but they offer enough that I wish they lasted a little longer. Following another album in 1980 with “Magnets,” they went on a 39-year hiatus before releasing another album. It’s safe to say that their impact would never be as big as it was in 1980. Their hopes of being more than a one hit wonder would be dashed, especially since they’re now reduced to VH1 specials on the subject.
This is a fun, rugged record that features that early New Wave sound so well. Even if there are hints of pop, it’s so genuinely fueled by rock stylings that it can’t help but sound rebellious in its dissonance. There is an urgency and purpose, very little emphasis on just cranking out love songs for the radio. That may be why “Turning Japanese” was their ultimate hit. It was the closest to showing romantic emotions that they’d ever do over these 11 songs. Nobody was turning on the radio for “Letters from Hiro.” It was too involved, requiring deeper thought. They had to settle for a song that is slightly less of a novelty hit than Dr. Demento’s Funny Five.
This is also the first of so many one hit wonders that I’ll encounter on this list. What I look forward to discovering is if the hits are as disconnected from the rest of the album as it is here. Does it mislead the listener to expect something goofy when there’s more of seriousness underneath? More importantly, will the catchiness of one song equate to an album full of tracks that have undeservedly fallen into obscurity? While I may be curious to see if The Vapors got better on their next album, I doubt they will ever be my favorite of this genre, but they have so much heart and purpose that even the throwaway songs are memorable. For now, I’ll just say that “New Clear Days” isn’t a towering achievement, but it definitely works as one of the more fun records I’ve heard to reference The Cold War extensively. That has to count for something… right?
Up Next: The English Beat - "I Just Can't Stop" (1980)
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