"Synthwave is dead" was the headline of one of 2021's most-read genre stories, and the archive tells a more careful story. It lists 2,238 releases dated 2021, 14% fewer than 2020's record 2,597, and the biggest loss was in self-released music: 375 releases, down by nearly a third from 546.
The headline, read closely
In June, Metal Hammer ran an interview with Perturbator's James Kent under the title "Synthwave is dead: how Perturbator embraced the dark side", with a standfirst saying synthwave is out and electro-goth is in.[1] We could not read the full text, so we will not paraphrase what he says inside. The headline is the artist's framing of a move towards a darker sound, not an obituary: the archive lists Perturbator at 14 releases, running from 2012 onwards. For that artist's neighbours, see If you like Perturbator: artists to try next.
What shrank, and by how much
At 2,238 the year sits just under 2019 (2,281) and well above 2017 (1,925), and it ranks fourth of the 27 years on file. Almost everything dipped.
| Family | 2020 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|
| Vaporwave | 1,007 | 914 |
| Synthwave | 963 | 763 |
| Popwave | 275 | 264 |
| Darksynth | 243 | 198 |
| Dreamwave | 108 | 99 |
The synthwave family dropped 21%, vaporwave 9%, and the gap between them widened again. LPs fell 13% (to 1,019), singles 15% (to 556), EPs to 402. The year has 1,494 artists on 600 labels, 819 of them new.
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Family | Releases |
|---|---|
| Vaporwave | 914 |
| Synthwave | 763 |
| Popwave | 264 |
| Darksynth | 198 |
| Dreamwave | 99 |
Three tags that went up
The synthwave tag fell from 894 to 699, vaporwave from 463 to 374 and future funk from 221 to 153. Against that, synth-pop rose from 180 to 198, signalwave from 64 to 108 and barber beats from 57 to 102. Horrorsynth, a tag that has not appeared in the top fifteen of the earlier years, shows up with 19 releases. If the dark end interests you, the What is horrorsynth? Synthwave for the slasher-movie crowd is there, and the slow end has the What is barber beats? The vaporwave micro-genre named after one prolific artist.
Barber beats connects to a March 2022 student-newspaper feature that describes haircuts for men and Macroblank as acts with a slower, more melancholy approach than earlier vaporwave.[3] In our archive those two are the busiest artists of 2021, with 18 and 12 releases.
Labels: bursts and a mystery
DMT Tapes FL released 113 records, up from 97 in 2020. Bayview Financial Trading Group jumped from 20 releases to 72 (of 115 overall), and a label named McDonald's™ has 35 of its 37. Then NewRetroWave (30), FOTOSHOPPE CO. (28), Aztec Records (28), FiXT Neon (24) and RetroSynth Records (22).
A label with 72 of its 115 releases in one year, or 35 of 37, is a different thing from one that has published steadily for a decade, and a ranking by count cannot tell them apart. That is why the label pages exist.
Names and countries
Behind Haircuts for Men and Macroblank come McDonald's™ (11, which appears as both label and artist), Makeup and Vanity Set (10), Acryl Madness from Russia (9), and DΛRKNΣSS from Mexico with 8 alongside four other acts on 8. Among debuts, Lost Engineer's Odyssey is tagged spacesynth and sits on Retrowave Touch Records; Hyperlink Dream Sync, on business casual, is tagged synthwave.
Country is known for only 58% of the year, so treat this ranking loosely. The United States has 495 releases and the United Kingdom 127. Germany, with 83, climbs to third, ahead of France (60), Brazil (57) and Russia (54).
One external marker for scale: as of the chart dated 13 March 2021, "Blinding Lights" had become the first song to spend a full year in the Hot 100's top ten.[2] A pop single in a retro-synth style set chart records while the genre's own release count fell, which says that pop reach and archive volume are separate things.
Ten albums to try
One per artist, spread over labels and tags.
- Hyperlink Dream Sync · 2021 · business casual · LPA synthwave debut on business casual.
- Lost Engineer · 2021 · Retrowave Touch Records · LPA debut tagged spacesynth, on Retrowave Touch Records.
- LAU · 2021 · Aztec Records · LPA synth-pop debut on Aztec Records, one of the year's busiest labels.
- Fraktion Schwarz-Weiss · 2021 · Hertz-Schrittmacher · LPA German-titled darkwave LP, a debut on Hertz-Schrittmacher.
- Device Operator · 2021 · business casual · LPTagged utopian virtual, one of the vaporwave branches, on business casual.
Sources
- Synthwave is dead: how Perturbator embraced the dark side · Dannii Leivers, Metal Hammer (Louder), 17 Jun 2021
- The Weeknd's Blinding Lights sets US Top 10 chart record · Official Charts Company, 9 Mar 2021
- Haircuts for Men, Macroblank, and the new vaporwave aesthetic · The Polytechnic (Rensselaer student newspaper), 15 Mar 2022