One strange aftereffect of Cultural Ground Zero has been the rise of the retrowave musical aesthetic. Like the PulpRev in fiction, this movement doesn’t so much embrace a genre as an earlier state of the art – in retrowave’s case, the 1980s.
To a member of Generation Y, the phenomenon of Zoomers producing musical 80s homages is baffling at first; then kind of chilling. Spend a few minutes watching videos from the synthwave subcategory, and you get the sense that the music makers are nostalgic for a time they never lived through.
Which, when you realize that these kids have only ever lived in Clown World, makes a tragic kind of sense.
Understand that we’re not talking about U2 or Tears for Fears paying tribute to the Beatles. The current retro trend tries to reproduce the sound and style of 1980s pop music as faithfully as possible. Everybody from garage bands to major label brands are getting in on the act.
But it turns out that capturing the 80s vibe isn’t as simple as getting some bad synths and jangly guitars together and putting sappy lyrics to “Canon in D.”
Some retro acts miss the mark, some get it right, and some are just cashing in.
Let’s examine some representative samples.
Futurecop! – “Home”
Consider this song from a couple of college roommates who found their niche a representative sample of what retrowave tries to achieve:
There’s craft and artistry at work, here. Though “Home” veers a bit too far into the synths-for-synths’-sake approach, it avoids self-parody. All in all, a good listen that wouldn’t quite fool someone who was there.
Next up, our first foray into Big Brand 80s homage …
John Mayer – “Last Train Home”
Hailed upon its release as the second coming of Toto, Mayer’s offering has the syths, the plunky guitars; even congas.
But is it a proper 80s vibe? Listen for yourself.
You can say this for Mayer: He gets the vapid light rock lyrics right.
Still, something is off about this song. It tries for heart, but it winds up feeling like the musical version of a cynical franchise reboot. The production is too clean, for one. And somehow, it feels too subdued. Back in the 80s, even wuss rock artists went all in.
Are the major labels even capable of making an 80s style record with any integrity anymore?
Our next selection may answer that question.
Carly Rae Jepsen – “Run Away With Me”
Ask around online for a contemporary 80s homage, and you’ll be pointed toward Carly Rae Jepsen’s 2015 album Emotion. The Canadian singer seems to have set her sights on girlpop acts like Tiffany and Debbie Gibson with this album.
Did she succeed in resurrecting their sound?
Check this out …
Nope. This is all wrong. They wrapped Max Martin style post-Ground Zero lyrics in dated-sounding synths and sold it as retro.
The absence of that obnoxious vocal fry/from-the-throat singing is what makes listening to 80s female singers so refreshing now. Jepsen should have listened to the teen acts named above – or better, Debbie Harry Belinda Carlyle, or heck, even Madonna – before attempting an 80s nostalgia record.
The scorecard’s looking pretty grim for the majors.
But if anything can salvage the situation, it’s …
The Weeknd – “Blinding Lights”
You had to know this one was coming. Do give it a fair hearing, though.
I’ll probably take flak for saying so, but this song is good.
And yes, despite the unfavorable reference to Max Martin above, I know he worked on this one. It goes to show he’s not entirely without talent.
And he helped write the only song we’ve covered so far that could pass for a genuine period release.
OK, some of the lyrics would have furled some brows back in the day. But “Blinding Lights” comes closest to reviving that 80s sound. So far.
Until …
Blood Orange – “Time Will Tell”
This dude lays down a respectable Prince-style groove. Plus he’s got the MTV ca. 1984 video look down.
Judge for yourself:
Now we’re talkin’.
But wait. The only ones to get 80s retro right so far have been two black artists. Meanwhile, the likes of John Mayer and Carly Rae Jepsen have failed.
Can white guys just not master the 80s sound?
Let’s ask these dudes:
A Silent Film – “Something to Believe in”
Finally! The ambient synths, echo-y guitars, and aspirational lyrics all line up.
It’s simple, buoyant, and doesn’t outstay its welcome.
This is how you do 80s top 40 rock, John Mayer.
Even still, retrowave hadn’t achieved its final form until our next song hit the airwaves. Or rather, theaters.
Not that this one needs any introduction, but to continue the format …
There’s nothing more I can say about this song than it says for itself.
Perfection
Now, for a retro experience that harkens back to the style of 1980s mecha anime, read my hit military thriller:
Some of the best in this style is made by Miami Nights 1984 and Sunglasses Kid, two artists that are Gen Y themselves. Their sound is something could also only thrive now that this 80s synth style has finally found acceptance among larger crowds.
To my knowledge, most of the notable synthwave artists are Gen Y or even older Xers.
Oh, cool. Sunglasses Kid has a tutorial on how to compose retrowave jams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1163bWYWWb8
Yep, most of the prominent synthwave artists are Gen Y, about my age, who might’ve been babies or little kids in the 80s, but mostly experience the 80s culture indirectly in the childhood in the 90s, as a lot of the music was still on the radio and movies on TV. This is not so strange. The Zoomer kids aping the 80s and 90s aesthetic, on the other hand…
I listened to the 3 songs in Drive on loop when the movie came out. Night Call, A Real Hero, and Under Your Spell are great tunes. Check out the Retro Wave channel on Youtube for similar songs. I recommend songs from Trevor Something.
Drive is a great movie, but it wouldn’t have been half as good without that soundtrack.
Retrowave as a genre came to be as pure homage to 80s, like in the music of MPM Soundtracks. Then became the fad that peaked with Stranger Things but it’s is gone now. The genre, however, is very alive and continues to evolve in the likes of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_14cb1xCY-4&ab_channel=TheMidnight"The Midnight and many others. Music that goes way beyond a mere pastiche. As if Retrowave is carrying on where the ground zero left us.
If a little self promotion is okay, here is a retrowave song I made some months ago.
I don’t quite know what to say. I’m a millennial, and one who has hardly heard a song from the 80s (That I was aware of) but when I heard that last song on your list I felt… Something. It wasn’t nostalgia, it was… Nice if that describes it. It felt like a glimpse into the past, of a better time compared to the present times, despite the fact I don’t know the first thing about the 80s.
It makes me think of old computer games like Command and Conquer, and the classic Civ games.
The song elevated your senses and intellect to reflect on higher things. Which is what art is supposed to do.
That’s why Gen Y and older tend to have excess nostalgia and complain about current pop culture. Before Ground Zero, a lot more mainstream entertainment produced the effect you just experienced.
The key is understanding the optimism of the era. We were doing really well and thought we always would. Our music reflected that. Anyone growing up in Clown World will find it a hard vibe to lock on to.
That’s true, and it’s all the more remarkable when you consider that the threat of nuclear annihilation still hung over our heads. Yet Americans’ response was to take heart and keep the faith that tomorrow would turn out OK.
PS: That’s one reason why “Something to Believe in” resonates so hard.
PPS: We could smile in the face of grave threats then but fall to pieces now that the US is global hegemon because we abandoned Christ the second we thought the danger had passed.
Not to be contrarian, but retrowave has a lot more in common with eighties soundtracks from guys like Giorgio Moroder, Jan Hammer, Tangerine Dream etc. The poppy elements are really deemphasized in favor of vibe.
Maybe there’s something to read in to that. Was the mood in Europe in the early 80s/late 70s more compatible to our modern sensibility?
That’s a fantastic question which perhaps our European readers can answer.
NB: Jan Hammer is the man!
Add Vangelis (especially the Blade Runner soundtrack) and you’ve got the major influences.
And that gives a big hint as to the appeal: Retrowave, etc. is not really about the 80’s, but instead about the future as envisioned by the 80’s and then reinterpreted by a modern audience. It is similar to how the first two fallout games are not about the 1950’s, but instead about the future as envisioned by the 1950’s and then rearranged by an apocalypse.
This is also a key to the appeal among the younger generation: it’s not really about the past, but instead the future. They just need the 80’s vision of the future to escape an eternal clownworld.
Of course, many of those involved don’t recognize the subtleties and treat the whole thing as just 80’s throwbacks. It’s the same as how the Bethesda Fallouts treat the series as a way to do goofy 1950’s references.
See also the conversation in the comments to this post, which go over some of the same ideas:
https://brianniemeier.com/2022/07/the-death-of-metal/
So retrowave is retrofuturism. Makes sense.
Kind of related to this, the other day I went to a birthday party and there were all these teenagers who looked like they were trying to dress up as early 90s grunge band members, or characters from Saved By The Bell or some similar TV show. It was amusingly inauthentic; is this just the hip aesthetic for zoomer kids these days? I mean, I actually lived in the 80s a couple years, but these kids missed out on the High 90s by almost fifteen years, and I doubt they’ve been watching reruns of Fresh Prince since they were five. It has to be indirect osmosis via social media trends and tastemakers who actually grew up in the 90s, right?
It’s like VMDL598 said. Kids with any kind of spiritual health can sense that something’s gone wrong. They don’t know exactly what, but simple deduction shows that it happened before their lifetime. So they’re trying to get back to a point before the wheels came off.
I liked that Carly Rae Jepsen album when it came out, but it’s aged like milk. “Come Away With Me” is a song that I’ve always speculated was just an attempt to rip off M83’s “Midnight City,” which is a much better 80s-influenced arena synth tune from a couple years earlier.
While putting this list together, I listened to Jepsen and M83. Some of the tracks on Emotion are OK. Every M83 song I heard was brilliant.
I do wonder if you’ve ever had the Hotline Miami soundtrack on while doing stuff, cuz it really does feel kinda similar to various Synthwave tracks, though it does predate that trend a fair bit.
It’s a great game with a killer soundtrack, but Drive and “Real Hero” predate it by at least a year.
Maybe I’m just a Philistine, but I didn’t find these stirring anything inside me. Then again, I’ve never really understood music, or all the stuff people claim to see and appreciate in it. The only types of songs that I really like are ballads, because they’re fundamentally stories set to music.
You may just have a finer musical palate. It’s not that anyone’s calling 80s pop the pinnacle of Western music. Everybody who isn’t hopelessly tin-eared can agree that 99% of 80s music was sappy, facile, and aged like vinegar. But it was the last time when Western pop still had a spirit of optimistic innocence.
Then the manufactured grunge phenomenon ripped out what heart remained.
Heh, maybe, but I think it’s more likely that my palette’s even more crude and unable to appreciate the finer details of music. Classical music doesn’t do wonders for me either.
College and Kavinsky started what I would like to dub the, “Literally Me” genre featuring montages of Drive, BR 2049, American Psycho, Taxi Driver and Fight Club.
On a more personal note, when I was a total loner in law school, I played the hell out of “Real Hero” while on the train ride commute.
based
That’s the perfect name for it.
I was born in 1975. I do enjoy the synthwave music from time to time but, as you said in a comment, 99% of has aged poorly. It’s strange what you said about hope in the face of nuclear annihilation. It’s true.
When I was in the 4th grade, our school district did its last nuclear drill- the much joked about ones where we filed into the hallways, crouched down and put our heads between our knees. My teacher that year spoke about our impending nuclear war with the the USSR every day. She thought it was a given and it was always going to start “next week”*. She HATED Ronald Reagan, by the way, and railed against him constantly. Anyway, we all still went to church regularly. We had faith in God, faith in the US, and ourselves. You’re correct, once we ‘won’, the country started acting like it no longer needed Christ.
Regarding music, does A-Ha’s ‘Take on Me’ count as synth? When I think of my favorite 80’s music, that song is always in my top 3, along with Tears for Fears ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ and Duran Duran ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’, though I am not sure that they qualify even though synthesizers are used heavily in them.
*She was nuts. She made us watch a movie she had taped on her VCR the year before called ‘The Day After’. I don’t think I slept for two weeks after we watched that movie, and every time our fire department’s mutual aid sirens sounded, I nearly crapped myself. Ah. Life in the Cold War for a kid.
I don’t know what counts as “synth” or if that’s even a genre (perhaps musicians in the audience can help out). What I do know is that you picked three excellent songs.
State mandated schooling has been child abuse for a long time.
I am surprised not to see Gunship on the list. I think they are far in away they best in this genre. I think they are actually successful in building on the nostalgia in a meaningful way.