I've decided that music, at least the music I listen to, is more similar than different. I get this from listening to Ultravox ("Passing Strangers") and Rush ("The Body Electric") right next to each other. Snobbery and narrow-mindedness would tell you these bands are as different as night and day, but if you actually listen to the music without any labels attached, there's a similar sense of melody and rhythm, and musicality.
And the Talking Heads, why are they "new wave"? What does that even mean? It's melodies, good vocals, good instruments. All the music I listen to has that.
Maybe it's just the narrow subset of music that I've chosen to buy with which I can draw these parallels, because it's a self-selecting set (not much jazz, country, hip-hop, reggae, classical, techno, etc.)
