Hold on. I need to music nerd for a bit.
Squeeze is multifaceted and they usually get thrown in with the new wave scene because it's easiest and sanest - I've seen them described as a kind of weird missing link between power-pop and post-punk, and that shouldn't work but it kind of does? - although their most popular songs feel like they're pretty much sophisti-pop and I think that's not a bad place for them in general. Kind of like how you'd call the Replacements alt-rock even though they have hardcore albums and country songs and power-pop tracks in their catalog. Do you look at the full catalog or the version of them that's most definitive to people, you know?
The Finns' previous band Split Enz is definitively new wave but Crowded House has a sound built on such foundational pop and rock songwriting principles that people just throw up their hands and say, "Whatever, it's pop rock," which is probably fine even when they get weirder. I think of them as pretty timeless, like a band that would just be fine existing in any era with only modest changes.
