When we remember the artists, we lost in 2016, we’ll look back with sadness. Not just sadness for the three icons who are no longer around, but the music that came out of their mouths. The losses of George Michael, David Bowie, and Prince made for a devastating sum, with all three deaths unexpected. Michael, Prince, and Bowie should all be here, and yet they aren’t, as they exited this world before we were ready to say goodbye. A Look Back at Three Musical Giants We Loved and Lost King of the hook Michael isn’t viewed in the same regard as Prince and Bowie by rock purists, seeing as he revelled in pop music, and the height of fame was shorter, at least in the U.S. That’s a mistake. While his chart reign was more pronounced, and his later work was less frequent and made less of an impact on the charts, he could write a hook better than any of his peers. And his voice was far superior, rivalling then late, great Freddie Mercury. Michael’s writing ability didn’t start and end with Faith, either. Praying for Time from his follow-up album Listen Without Prejudice Volume 1 was as good...

While the media would later have a huge role to play in the acceptance of New Wave, as was proven by its discovery in Newsweek and Time, the media in the U.S. was initially against the genre. Lee Abrams was significant in American radio airplay in 1980. The established media executive is known for or developing the Album Oriented Rock (AOR) format that is still used by numerous radio stations today.

As New Wave made itself known in the U.S., two well-known middle-class new journals (‘Newsweek’ and ‘Time’) both featured front page stories on the New Wave/Punk movement. New Wave had truly arrived in America, although critics offered mixed reviews, being somewhere unsure about the transition.

The term “New Wave” was first uttered in the mid-late 1970’s as another way of describing Punk music. Punk originated as a way of countering the self-indulgent, blood, machinations of the big progressive rock groups with a short but uber-successful shelf life. The U.S.A. saw New Wave as being something of a fad.

Honky tonk music originally developed in the 40’s in honky tonk bars near Texan oil fields. Honky tonk acts typically included drums, stand-up bass, fiddle, pedal steel guitar, and acoustic guitar, and the songs tended to be about pain, heartbreak, love, and loneliness. The History of Country Music – Part 2