New Romantic

Foppish shirt, powdered facial whiteout, pulsating synth backdrop . . . and, of course, a passion for extravagant romanticism. Such were the trappings of the theatrical yet streetwise artists who created and defined the New Romantic movement in London's clubland, then turned U.K. TV's weekly music show, Top of the Pops, into a weekly carnivale during the early '80s, before spearheading the Second British Invasion of the U.S. Duran Duran's sci-fi style-fest "Planet Earth" gets us underway, Ultravox's epic, cinematic single "Vienna" blends artful sophistication with a sense of mystery, and Visage's "Fade to Grey" invites a superior degree of poseur-ability.

Follow the trail of electro-pop, make-up, 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, but became more visible as the keyboard presence in Yaz ("Don't Go") alongside Alison Moyet, before going on to form Erasure. Limahl marked his solo breakaway from Kajagoogoo by scoring a global hit with the theme song from the 1984 movie The Neverending Story; Boy George went even bigger in the States the same year, spending three weeks at the top of the charts with Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon"; and Alphaville sowed the seeds for a future appearance on the Napoleon Dynamite soundtrack with "Forever Young."

American New Romantics were few and far between, but you'll find a band apart, 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 a fairly disparate array of styles. Gary Numan ("Are 'Friends' Electric?") 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 tunes of Altered Images ("Happy Birthday") and King ("Love & Pride"). And while the New Romantic movement was primarily a British phenomenon, New Orleans' Red Rockers snuck in at the fringes with their dreamy evocation of "China," which peaked at #53 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983.

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 London's Soho during the early '80s — chances are you were a New Romantic. The movement would ultimately spread away from its underground club roots (Culture Club's Boy George was the cloakroom attendant at the influential Blitz Club in Covent Garden) and into the charts, from which we've pulled this selection of still-electrifying tracks. Trace the trend from A Flock of Seagulls to Yaz, lingering flamboyantly with the likes of Japan ("Life In Tokyo"), ABC ("The Look of Love, Pt. 1"), and Adam Ant ("Stand and Deliver").