A review by michaelontheplanet
Mad World: An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s by Moby, Nick Rhodes, Jonathan Bernstein, Lori Majewski

2.0

Must we throw this filth at our pop kids? : I’d recommend not. “Noo wave” really isn’t the best topic for American music journalists. The over-analysing, explain it till it’s a dessicated husk school of writing (see Griel Marcus) doesn’t so much shine a light as sear the subject to death. Here we have 36 pop acts of the early 80s, the vast majority of them Brits, cut up into small pieces and inspected on slides in a laboratory whilst some US bint yammers away humourlessly in one’s ear, like Janice from Friends. OH MY GAAD YOU MEAN A FLACK A SEAGALLS? I LAVVED A FLACK A SEAGALLS. If you can stand 300pages of that, you’re a better man than I, Stephen ‘Tintin’ Duffy. It’s not without its moments, and it’s quite touching to see how disaffected Americans turned to UK acts in their droves as an alternative to hair metal and John Cougar Mellencamp. Wal-Mart must have done a bundle on sales of kohl and Robert Smith style jampot lipstick. But Mad World, a book that relies on Nick Rhodes’s foreword for 99% of its wit, let alone irony, is too earnestly adoring to have the bite that used to characterise a Smash Hits album review. And they could do it in 75 words.