Synthpop is the original: pop songs built on synthesizers and drum machines, which arose in Britain and Japan in the late 1970s and dominated the charts in the early 1980s. Synthwave is the revival, made decades later by people who borrow that sound, usually without a singer. The two overlap, and the overlap is the vocal, song-led corner of today's scene: the Frekvenci archive lists 1,749 synthpop releases, almost as many as the darksynth family's 1,803.
The short answer
If a track has a verse, a chorus and a singer, and sounds like 1983, it is probably synthpop, whether it came out in 1983 or 2023. If it is an instrumental built around a lead synth and arpeggios, evoking a film, it is probably synthwave. The line is soft on purpose: many acts, including The Midnight, are filed on both sides.
| Synthpop (original) | Synthwave (revival) | |
|---|---|---|
| When | Emerged 1977 to 1980; chart peak 1981 to 1985[1] | Revival from the mid-to-late 2000s[3] |
| Where it came from | UK and Japan, out of post-punk and new wave | France and Western Europe first, per Wikipedia, then worldwide |
| Built for | Radio, singles and the charts | Films, games, night drives and playlists |
| Voice | A singer, nearly always | Often none |
| Lives in the archive as | The Synthpop tag: 1,749 releases | The Synthwave family: 8,105 releases |
Synthpop then
Wikipedia defines synth-pop as pop in which the synthesizer is the dominant instrument, with drum machines and sequencers sometimes replacing everything else. It dates the genre's emergence to 1977 to 1980 in the UK and Japan, within post-punk and new wave, and its commercial peak to 1981 to 1985.[1] A short timeline from the same article shows how fast it moved. Yellow Magic Orchestra and The Human League's "Being Boiled" appeared in 1978. Gary Numan's "Are Friends Electric?" topped the UK chart in 1979. The Human League's "Don't You Want Me" was a UK number one at the end of 1981. MIDI was defined in 1982. Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams" reached number one on the US Hot 100 in 1983, and a-ha's "Take On Me" in 1985.[1]
The studio details are what synthwave producers copy. Sound On Sound's history of "Take On Me" shows how a hit gets made. The first version, released in October 1984, reached only No. 137 in the UK. Alan Tarney then produced the version we know in early 1985, built on a Roland Juno 60 riff, a Yamaha DX7, PPG Wave keyboards and a programmed LinnDrum, and it reached No. 2 in the UK that September.[2] A 1985 pop single with a singer is also a catalogue of the sounds of a thousand later revival tracks.
Synthwave now
Wikipedia's synthwave article places the beginning of the revival in the mid-to-late 2000s.[3] An academic study argues that synthwave works in film and television as shorthand for the 1980s, tied to the film scores of Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter, Giorgio Moroder and Vangelis, and often "more 1980s" than the real decade.[4] So synthwave borrowed from film scores and games as well as from pop. Synthpop in the revival is the part that borrowed from pop. A short history of synthwave, from French blogs to the charts has the longer timeline.
What the archive shows
The numbers need careful reading. Synthpop is the biggest tag in the pop-leaning family, Popwave: 1,749 releases from 1,027 artists on 719 labels. That is about two thirds of the family's 2,678 releases. The archive starts in 2000, so the earliest entries are not 1980s records but modern releases, or old ones someone tagged later.
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Year | Releases |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 9 |
| 2010 | 11 |
| 2011 | 10 |
| 2012 | 30 |
| 2013 | 31 |
| 2014 | 54 |
| 2015 | 82 |
| 2016 | 145 |
| 2017 | 134 |
| 2018 | 170 |
| 2019 | 173 |
| 2020 | 180 |
| 2021 | 198 |
| 2022 | 163 |
| 2023 | 111 |
| 2024 | 96 |
| 2025 | 70 |
Notice when it peaks. The synthwave family's yearly count hit its high in 2020; synthpop's came a year later, at 198 in 2021, and it has fallen more slowly: 163 in 2022, 96 in 2024. The vocal side of the revival outlasted the boom a little. 2026 is a part year.
On format, singles make up 526 of the tag's releases (30%) and LPs 679, so a synthpop release is more likely to be an album than a single, though not by a wide margin.
Tags overlap. Among the tag's releases, the community tag "synth-pop" appears on 612 and "synthwave" on 585, with "electropop" on 192, "pop" on 190 and "new wave" on 77. About a third of the tagged releases therefore also carry the word synthwave. The tags are community opinions, and some releases carry both.
Who releases it? NewRetroWave has 46 synthpop releases and Aztec Records has 43 of its 108 listed releases; the London label's own page is Aztec Records: label profile and where to start. Lazersound Productions has 18 of its 20 listed releases, and Italians Do It Better 17. NewRetroWave: label profile and where to start and FiXT Neon: label profile and where to start profile two labels that sit on both sides of the line. Country is known for 50% of the tag's releases, a lower share than for most families; among those, the United States leads with 274, then the United Kingdom (143) and Germany (66). Sweden has 52, and Swedish synthwave: a small country with a big sound covers that scene.
Vocal synthwave artists
The artists with the most synthpop releases in the archive are W O L F C L U B (22 releases, United Kingdom), The Midnight (15 of their 26, United States), Obsession of Time (15, Sweden), Timecop1983 (14 of 23, Netherlands), 2DCAT (14, United States) and Freezepop (12, United States). Freezepop's earliest listed record is from 2003, a reminder that the tag also holds bands from outside the revival.
The Midnight and Timecop1983 show two ways the genres meet. The Midnight make songs with singers. Timecop1983 describes his aim as a "melancholic/romantic feeling", and his 2015 album Reflections, set for release on 3 July 2015, led with the single "Don't Let Go" featuring Dana Jean Phoenix.[5] Both are tagged synthpop for much of their work, and both are regular names in synthwave lists. If you like The Midnight: 10 artists to try next, If you like GUNSHIP: artists to try next and If you like FM-84: artists to try next map the neighbours of three vocal-friendly acts; all three carry the synth-pop tag in the archive. For the overlap with Italian dance pop, see Italo disco and synthwave: the 1980s sound that keeps coming back, and for the dance-floor cousin, What is nu-disco? Where synthwave meets the dance floor.
Records to start with
Picked to run from the revival's earliest names to recent years, one record per artist, on labels from tiny to well known.
- A 2008 EP tagged synthpop; College is one of the earliest names in the revival.
- Spray · 2007 · Ninthwave Records · LPA 2007 LP on Ninthwave Records, the earliest of these.
- The Midnight · 2014 · self-released · EPThe 2014 EP that begins The Midnight's listed catalogue.
- The Midnight · 2016 · Studio C4 · LPThe 2016 LP, from the artist most often filed on both sides of this line.
- FM-84 · 2016 · Electronic Purification Records · LPA 2016 LP filed under synthpop, on Electronic Purification Records.
- Adam Is A Girl · 2020 · RecordJet · LPA 2020 LP on RecordJet, from the tag's peak years.
Quick answers
Can synthwave have vocals?
Yes. The scene is mostly instrumental, but plenty of acts use singers, and the Frekvenci archive's synthpop tag holds 1,749 releases that overlap with it. Timecop1983's 2015 album led with a vocal single.[5]
Is synthpop only a 1980s genre?
No. Wikipedia's timeline follows it through a 2000s revival, with Ladytron, the Postal Service, Cut Copy and the Killers named among the acts that brought it into the mainstream in 2003 and 2004.[1] The archive's own synthpop tag grows through the 2010s and peaks in 2021.
Is "Take On Me" synthwave?
No, it is a 1985 synthpop single, and its Tarney-produced version is exactly the kind of record revival producers study: Juno riff, DX7, PPG Wave, LinnDrum.[2] Synthwave acts borrow its sounds, usually without the singer.
Why does the archive list synthpop records from 2000?
The archive starts in 2000. Anything tagged synthpop with a release date on file from then on is listed, including bands outside the revival and reissues dated later than the original recording.
Where to listen
The Pop station (90.7 FM) is the home of the song-led end; the Romance station (97.2 FM) is the slower, sadder one. For the instrumental side, read What is synthwave? A plain guide, with the numbers and Synthwave sub-genres explained: a map with real counts.
Sources
- Synth-pop (used as a map to its references) · Wikipedia
- Classic Tracks: A-ha 'Take On Me' · Sound On Sound, Mar 2011
- Synthwave (used as a map to its references) · Wikipedia
- More 1980s than the 1980s: Hauntological and Hyperreal Meanings of Synthwave Soundtracks · Mattia Merlini, Sound Stage Screen 3(1), 2023
- What Does the Future Hold for Timecop1983? · Vehlinggo, 1 Jul 2015