New Romantic

Foppish shirt, powdered facial white-out, pulsating synth backdrop . . . and, of course, a predilection for extravagant romanticism. Such were the trappings of the theatrical, yet streetwise, artists who created and defined the New Romantic movement that turned Top of the Pops into a weekly carnivale during the early '80s. We begin with Ultravox's epic, cinematic single "Vienna". Follow the trail of electropop and glamour to Next Steps.

Vince Clarke was a lynchpin figure in the musical direction of the New Romantic movement — he was a founding member of Depeche Mode ("New Life"), but became more visible as the keyboard fella in Yazoo ("Don't Go") alongside Alison Moyet, before going on to form Erasure ("Sometimes") with singer Andy Bell, who sounds — let's face it — a lot like Moyet. You'll also find Clarke with the Assembly, and much more besides, in Deep Cuts.

There was plenty of cross-pollination within the ranks of the New Romantics, which is why you'll find common threads across fairly disparate styles. Gary Numan ("Music for Chameleons", "Down in the Park") affected a look of po-faced androgyny that owed a debt to David Bowie ("Boys Keep Swinging"), while a more cheerful vein of pop links the chirpy songs of Haircut 100 and Kajagoogoo.

If you had the soul (and flouncy shirts) of a consumptive 19th-century poet and the musical circuitry of a 25th-century android — and you were turning heads on the streets of Soho during the early '80s — chances are you were a New Romantic. The movement would ultimately spread away from its underground club roots (Boy George was the cloakroom attendant at the influential Blitz Club in Covent Garden) and onto the charts, from which we've pulled this selection of still-electrifying tracks. Trace the trend from A Flock of Seagulls to Yazoo.