A Fan-Funded Catalogue EP Built on 80s New Wave, AOR and Arena Rock Guitars
The radio edit of the title track opens Poplife at three minutes and 12 seconds. It is a melodic, guitar-driven pop-rock song rooted in 80s rock radio. Matt Springfield recorded it with the producer Greg Haver, best known for his work with Manic Street Preachers. The five-track Poplife EP is the quickest way into the Matt Springfield catalogue, and it also carries a Jelle Haasnoot mix of Things I’ve Said.
Matt Springfield’s Poplife is in the playlist below, and the songwriter’s coverage is collected on the Matt Springfield artist profile. The EP came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news sites. Listen to the radio edit first, then read on for the Greg Haver sessions behind it.
The New Wave and AOR Records Matt Springfield Grew Up On
The wave this record rides started long before the EP. In the mid-1990s, while dance music and grunge ruled, Springfield was already fixed on the new wave of the decade before. His artist page on the French station La Grosse Radio lists the records he learned from: Depeche Mode, U2, The Police, David Bowie, Oasis and New Order. At the time, he was teaching himself guitar and programming.
That pairing of new wave melody and arena-sized guitars keeps coming back. It returned in the 2000s, when a new set of bands took 80s new wave to stadium size. It also survives on the power pop and mod revival circuit, which still trades in three-minute songs. In September 2022, for example, the Swedish label and radio show Ice Cream Man Power Pop and More Records put Poplife on its compilation Indian Summer.
AOR is the other thread. The term covers the polished, melody-first rock that American radio built its playlists around in the late 70s and 80s. Springfield leans on it with melodic songwriting and retro-inspired, guitar-driven production. As a result, the EP never strays far from that blueprint.
Where Matt Springfield Fits, From a 2008 Single to the Greg Haver Sessions Behind Poplife
The songs on Poplife are not new, and that is the point of the EP. Haunted first came out in 2008 on the American label Woobie Bear Music. Two years later came Things I’ve Said. Springfield funded it through 372 backers on the crowdfunding label Akamusic and recorded it at Modern World Studios in the UK with Greg Haver. Ryan Smith then mastered it at Sterling Sound in New York.
Haver brought serious credentials to an independent session. The Welsh producer, now based in New Zealand, worked on Manic Street Preachers albums including This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, which entered the UK albums chart at number one in 1998. He also worked on Know Your Enemy and Send Away the Tigers. On top of that, he is a drummer, and he played drums when Springfield recorded the album Erase All Data in the UK in January 2012.
Erase All Data arrived on 1 June 2012 with all four of the EP’s songs on it: The End of Life, Poplife, Things I’ve Said and Haunted. The EP gathers them into a shorter listen. It opens with the radio edit of the title track, then adds the Jelle Haasnoot mix of Things I’ve Said. After that come Haunted and The End of Life, and a longer version of Poplife closes the set.
Since then, the catalogue has kept moving. Things I’ve Said became a 12-track remix collection in 2013. Later, Springfield returned to Haver for the 2024 single Fly. The notes on its official video say they recorded it at Hansa Studios in Berlin. The album Crossing the Border followed in November 2024, with Fly, All the Lovers and Believe in Love among its 12 tracks.
RockRevival.News’s curator team: “Springfield has been writing the same kind of song for nearly two decades, and he means it: melody first, guitars up front, nothing past four minutes. On Poplife that consistency starts to sound like a signature.”
Adjacent Acts for Matt Springfield’s Poplife, From U2 and New Order to The Killers
Springfield’s own reference points make the map easy to draw. First, U2 set the standard for arena-sized guitar records on The Joshua Tree in 1987. There, The Edge’s delayed guitar lines filled stadiums without leaning on heavy distortion. Poplife chases that open, melodic guitar sound on a smaller budget.
Next, New Order showed in the 1980s that a guitar band could live on the dancefloor too. In the same way, Things I’ve Said has spent years in remixes, including the Jelle Haasnoot mix on this EP. Finally, The Killers took 80s new wave back to arena size on Hot Fuss in 2004. Springfield names them among his influences, alongside U2, Muse and Foo Fighters.
The power pop revival is the last neighbour, and the most practical one. Its radio shows and compilations, like the Swedish Indian Summer set, are where a three-minute guitar song with a big chorus still finds new listeners.
So for listeners who keep 80s rock radio, AOR and power pop in the same playlist, Poplife is a quick, well-made way into an independent catalogue that has never chased trends. Start with the radio edit, then go back to Erase All Data for the full 2012 sessions.
Stream Poplife on Spotify or Apple Music, and work through his YouTube playlist. Follow Matt Springfield on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, SoundCloud, his YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook and X.
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