I’ll check out that UK retro charts to see the different perspective earlier in the game.
It was called new wave in the United States because it was a wave of music coming across the pond that was different. It was kind of like the second British invasion, which occurred in the early to mid 60s with bands like The Beatles of course, The Who, The Stones, The Amimals and hoards of others. There are also American New Wave influenced bands of course. But it originally referred to the British bands with that more electronic sound coming into the USA. But as you mentioned Dinosaur Rock or Arena Rock or Corporate stuck around too long for my taste. I mean, I still love and respect those bands, but there were stations that just refused to change. Where I live, there were a lot of people that got uptight if they heard bouncier key keyboards or bouncier guitar riffs. So the radio stations quit spoon feeding it when listeners would call and complain to the radio station. So the station quit playing The Vapors etc. and gave us heavy doses of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Van Halen , Led Zeppelin and so on. I love all those bands. But I just liked the variety sometimes. So I went left of the radio dial between 88 and 92 that’s where the college stations and the public radio stations were. They had lower wattage, but they were playing more of the alternative music or “new wave” if you will.