The 1980s are a highly underrated decade for music

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OZZY
Sabbath
Van Halen
Motorhead
AC/DC
Judas Priest
Iron Maiden
Metallica
Guns n Roses
The Cult
Def Leppard
KISS

I knew most of these bands from the 70s and they carried on.
I saw most of them live in the 80s.

I guess what I'm getting at is that genres like new wave, new romantic and synth pop all have roots within post-punk, if you Venn diagram those terms there's pretty heavy overlap. Punk's influence ranges extends into all sorts of genres that aren't punk, from country to metal to electronic dance music to hip-hop.

That's not to try to downplay how important stuff that grew out of disco was to that era as well, but it's worth noting how even a lot of those styles adopted more stripped down arrangements compared to earlier stuff that was more obviously disco. House, along with eurobeat/hi-nrg/italo disco/whatever you'd like to call it both tend to be more minimalist and energetic than disco was.

I'm not even really discussing preferences, although I won't act like my fondness for punk and a lot of it's offshoots might not bias me. I'm largely talking about importance for influencing how popular music continued to evolve.

One other factor is how long punk has managed to last as a genre, which has helped it to spawn offshoot genres for decades. There's a glut of bands to be inspired by the American first wave (including the British first wave that drew a lot of British pub rockers in), there's a glut of bands inspired by the first British wave, which includes all of the founding post-punk bands, along with all of the founding UK82 and adjacent bands, along with at least some of the American second wave.

From there on it gets a lot messier to try to describe waves because there starts to be less separation between them, but if you follow that American second wave I'm describing you'd see hardcore, college rock/alternative rock, grunge and emo emerge from it during the 80s, thrash metal and crossover also drew from it.

By the time the 90s had started you'd be hard pressed to find examples of rock music that weren't influenced by punk in one way or another, whether it was the DIY/own your own label or distro business model, the simpler arrangements or the intensity or something else.

TL;DR: Punk has buggered the ancestors of such a wide array of genres it's hard to escape music that's been influenced by it in some way.

I don't know how to differentiate all those categories ^. Very impressive.

Most people think there was no electric guitar in the 80s but of course there was.
Other than Duran Duran I don't remember listening to much electronic "80s" music until about 85 -86.

How would you classify The Cure, FXE?

Awesome, but also any of the following depending on how fussy I'm being:

new wave
alternative (depending on how alternative is defined)
post-punk (early)
gothic (at least some)

There's parts of their discography I'm not familiar with so if they've dabbled in more synth-poppy, or shoegazey, or whatever other sounds at any time I might have missed it.

Same.

I always thought New Wave was the electronic no-guitar stuff.

I remember being freaked out when all the kids in high school in LA were into "New Wave".
I didn't have a name for it at the time.
I didn't know what radio station to listen to or how to fit in.
Suddenly everyone was wearing bright colours and listening to stuff I didn't know.
My cousin dragged me to a Smiths concert.
I'd never heard of them and I pouted the whole time.

I was still obsessed with OZZY and Zeppelin, because of my resistance to change.
It was like someone suddenly changed the rules without telling me.

I just finally got adapted and then discovered I'd missed the entire Grunge phase.

* Also, Radiohead was big in the 80s. They've been around forever.

we came of age in the Seventies, when punk was punk, and disco was disco, and never did the twain meet. After January 1980 they did meet. Cyndy Lauper and early Madonna dressed kinda punk but did music with dance beats. Guitars were replaced by synths in what was supposed to rocknroll. And we just got older, and it just stopped mattering anyway.

I saw Howard Jones in concert.
He went to the middle of the stage alone, pushed a button on something, and sang.

I was totally disappointed because I'd always liked his songs (still do).

You mean because he wasnt using real instruments?

Yes - Sorry I didn't explain it well. It was just him alone, and he pushed a button instead of playing anything.

Very weird.

I always got the impression that new wave lumped together a lot of stuff that came up after punk, not all of which was closely related. Bananarama and Dead or Alive don't have much in common with The Cure, who don't have much in common with Elvis Costello, yet those are all acts that I've heard lumped together as new wave.

It's more of a catch-all term than a lot of other genre names, new wave's main commonalities seem to be a few models of synthesizers and some production techniques.

For what it's worth I've also heard bands like The Smiths described as more of a reaction to the synth based bands. They kinda represented the next wave of British rock music that followed new wave, which maybe makes them more analogous to a band like REM.

It saves money on musicians I suppose

If you were disappointed by that, I saw a kraftwerk concert on youtube where the band members were not even on stage. They were replaced by mannequins for the whole show

That's probably how I'd have to arrange a live performance. Working with other people isn't for everyone.

I remember hearing about that.

Another one of my issues is that I've never watched much TV.
I didn't know what "MTV" was until it was over.
I didn't know what any of the "New Wave" groups looked like, and I didn't buy the albums.
That made it hard to understand what they were trying to be.

The world without internet was so frustrating!

Thats a shame cos I listen to a fair amount of new wave music, there's some gems out there. Having said that it was probably unhealthy to watch it for long cos they just had music videos on repeat all day..

I liked 80s music once I got used to it, I just didn't buy a lot of the albums.
We were in LA for two years and I knew we weren't staying.

I bought some albums after coming home but by then I knew what the visual was supposed to be.
Now I can watch videos online.

Good bands Most radio stations would consider em classic rock instead of the 80s category. The 80s category would be the pop hits stuff.