Rubber Rodeo - Souvenir

What this video is

Released in 1986 as the lead single from Heartbreak Highway, 'Souvenir' arrived at a moment when Rubber Rodeo's genre-blending proposition — fusing Roxy Music-influenced new wave electronics with sincere country-western aesthetics — had received significant MTV exposure but was struggling to convert that visibility into commercial chart success. The band, formed at the Rhode Island School of Design, embodied the…

Why it matters

Rubber Rodeo occupied a singular niche in the mid-1980s as pioneers of what critic J.D. Considine termed 'cowboy pop' — a synthesis of new wave production and country-western sensibility that anticipated the alt-country and Americana crossover movements of the 1990s and 2000s. 'Souvenir'…