HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Synthwave (also called outrun, retrowave, or futuresynth) is an
electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...
microgenre A microgenre is a specialized or niche genre. The term has been used since at least the 1970s to describe highly specific subgenres of music, literature, film, and art. In music, examples include the myriad sub-subgenres of heavy metal and electr ...
that is based predominantly on the music associated with action, science-fiction, and horror film soundtracks of the 1980s. Other influences are drawn from the decade's art and video games. Synthwave musicians often espouse nostalgia for 1980s culture and attempt to capture the era's atmosphere and celebrate it. The genre developed in the mid-to late 2000s through
French house French house, also known as French touch, filter house and tekfunk, is a style of house music originally produced by French musicians in the 1990s. It is a form of Euro disco and a popular strand of the late 1990s and 2000s European dance m ...
producers, as well as younger artists who were inspired by the 2002 video game '' Grand Theft Auto: Vice City''. Other reference points included composers
John Carpenter John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American filmmaker, actor, and composer. Although he worked in various film genres, he is most commonly associated with horror, action, and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s. He ...
,
Jean-Michel Jarre Jean-Michel André Jarre (; born 24 August 1948) is a French composer, performer and record producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and new-age genres, and is known for organising outdoor spectacles featuring his music, accompani ...
,
Vangelis Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou ( el, Ευάγγελος Οδυσσέας Παπαθανασίου ; 29 March 1943 – 17 May 2022), known professionally as Vangelis ( ; el, Βαγγέλης, links=no ), was a Greek composer and arranger of ...
(especially his score for the 1982 film ''
Blade Runner ''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick' ...
''), and
Tangerine Dream Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music band founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The group has seen many personnel changes over the years, with Froese having been the only constant member until his death in January 2015. The best-known lineup ...
. Synthwave reached wider popularity after being featured in the soundtracks of the 2011 film '' Drive'' (which included some of the genre's best-known songs), 2017 film '' Thor: Ragnarok'' and the
Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...
series '' Stranger Things''.


Characteristics and related terms

Synthwave is a
microgenre A microgenre is a specialized or niche genre. The term has been used since at least the 1970s to describe highly specific subgenres of music, literature, film, and art. In music, examples include the myriad sub-subgenres of heavy metal and electr ...
of
electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...
that draws predominantly from 1980s films, video games, and cartoons, as well as composers such as
John Carpenter John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American filmmaker, actor, and composer. Although he worked in various film genres, he is most commonly associated with horror, action, and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s. He ...
,
Jean-Michel Jarre Jean-Michel André Jarre (; born 24 August 1948) is a French composer, performer and record producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and new-age genres, and is known for organising outdoor spectacles featuring his music, accompani ...
,
Vangelis Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou ( el, Ευάγγελος Οδυσσέας Παπαθανασίου ; 29 March 1943 – 17 May 2022), known professionally as Vangelis ( ; el, Βαγγέλης, links=no ), was a Greek composer and arranger of ...
, and
Tangerine Dream Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music band founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The group has seen many personnel changes over the years, with Froese having been the only constant member until his death in January 2015. The best-known lineup ...
. Other reference points include
electronic dance music genres Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...
including house, synth, and nu-disco. It is primarily an instrumental genre, although there are occasional exceptions to the rule. Common tempos are between 80 and 118 BPM, while more upbeat tracks may be between 128 and 140 BPM. "Outrun" is a synonym of synthwave that was later used to refer more generally to retro 1980s aesthetics such as VHS tracking artifacts, magenta neon, and
gridlines In graphic design, a grid is a structure (usually two-dimensional) made up of a series of intersecting straight (vertical, horizontal, and angular) or curved lines (grid lines) used to structure content. The grid serves as an armature or fram ...
. The term comes from the 1986
arcade racing Racing games are a video game genre in which the player participates in a racing competition. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to fantastical settings. They are distributed along a spectrum between more realistic ra ...
game ''
Out Run (also stylized as ''OutRun'') is an arcade driving video game released by Sega in September 1986. It is known for its pioneering hardware and graphics, nonlinear gameplay, a selectable soundtrack with music composed by Hiroshi Kawaguchi (comp ...
'', which is known for its soundtrack that could be selected in-game and its 1980s aesthetic. According to musician Perturbator (James Kent), outrun is also its own subgenre, mainly instrumental, and often contains 1980s clichéd elements in the sound such as
electronic drums Electronic drums is a modern electronic musical instrument, primarily designed to serve as an alternative to an acoustic drum kit. Electronic drums consist of an electronic sound module which produces the synthesized or sampled percussion sounds ...
,
gated reverb Gated reverb or gated ambience is an audio processing technique that combines strong reverb and a noise gate. The effect is often associated with the sound of 1980s British popular music. It was developed in 1979 by producer Steve Lillywhite and e ...
, and
analog synthesizer An analog (or analogue) synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Trautonium, were built with a variety of ...
bass lines and leads - all to resemble tracks from that time period. There is also a visual component on synthwave album covers and music videos. According to ''
PC Gamer ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games m ...
'', the essence of outrun visuals is "taking elements of a period of '80s excess millennials find irresistibly evocative, and modernizing them so they're just barely recognizable." Other subgenres include dreamwave, darksynth, and scifiwave. Journalist Julia Neuman cited "outrun", "futuresynth", and "retrowave" as alternative terms for synthwave while author Nicholas Diak wrote that "retrowave" was an
umbrella term In linguistics, semantics, general semantics, and ontologies, hyponymy () is a semantic relation between a hyponym denoting a subtype and a hypernym or hyperonym (sometimes called umbrella term or blanket term) denoting a supertype. In other wor ...
that encompasses 1980s revivalism genres such as synthwave and
vaporwave Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, visual art style, and Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator, R&B, and lounge music fro ...
. Darksynth is influenced by horror cinema. Invisible Oranges wrote that darksynth is exemplified mainly by a shift away from the bright "''
Miami Vice ''Miami Vice'' is an American crime drama television series created by Anthony Yerkovich and produced by Michael Mann for NBC. The series stars Don Johnson as James "Sonny" Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs, two M ...
'' vibes" and "French electro house influences" and "toward the darker electronic terrains of horror movie maestro composers John Carpenter and
Goblin A goblin is a small, grotesque, monstrous creature that appears in the folklore of multiple European cultures. First attested in stories from the Middle Ages, they are ascribed conflicting abilities, temperaments, and appearances depending on ...
" also infused with sounds from
post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad music genre, genre of Punk Music, punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde s ...
,
industrial Industrial may refer to: Industry * Industrial archaeology, the study of the history of the industry * Industrial engineering, engineering dealing with the optimization of complex industrial processes or systems * Industrial city, a city dominate ...
and EBM. Based on 1980s-inspired color schemes of pink and blue that are shared with synthwave and retrowave, a stylistic theme known as " bisexual lighting" has also been suggested by some commentators.


Origins

Synthwave originates from the mid-2000s or late 2000s. Diak traced the genre to a broader trend involving young artists whose works drew from their childhoods in the 1980s. He credited the success of the 2002 video game '' Grand Theft Auto: Vice City'' with shifting "attitudes toward the '80s ... from parody and ambivalence to that of homage and reverence", leading directly to genres such as synthwave and vaporwave. The influence of ''Vice City'' was also noted by '' MusicRadar''. Molly Lambert of '' MTV'' noted the song "
Love on a Real Train "Love on a Real Train" is a 1984 single by Tangerine Dream from the soundtrack for the film ''Risky Business''. Critics have noted the influence of Steve Reich's ''Music for 18 Musicians'' on "Love on a Real Train". The song has been featured on ...
" by
Tangerine Dream Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music band founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The group has seen many personnel changes over the years, with Froese having been the only constant member until his death in January 2015. The best-known lineup ...
in the film '' Risky Business'' (1983) was a major influence, with "ornately repetitive synth patterns, hypnotic chimes, and percussive choogling drum machines". The mid-2000s
French house French house, also known as French touch, filter house and tekfunk, is a style of house music originally produced by French musicians in the 1990s. It is a form of Euro disco and a popular strand of the late 1990s and 2000s European dance m ...
acts
David Grellier David Grellier (born July 2, 1979 in Nantes, France) is a French electronica musician and founder of the musical projects College (2005) and Valerie (2007). Under the stage name Mitch Silver, he is also a member of the electroclash band Sexy Sus ...
(College), and
Kavinsky Vincent Belorgey (born 31 July 1975), known professionally as Kavinsky, is a French musician, producer, DJ, and actor. His production style is reminiscent of the electropop film soundtracks of the 1980s. Kavinsky claims that his music is inspire ...
, who had created music in the style of 1980s film scores, were among the earliest artists to be part of the emergence of synthwave. Key reference points for early synthwave included the 1982 film ''
Blade Runner ''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick' ...
'' (both the soundtrack and the film itself), 8- and 16-bit video games, 1980s jingles for VHS production companies, and television news broadcasts and advertisements from that era. According to ''
NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
'' and '' MusicRadar'', the 2011 film '' Drive'' was a major influence on synthwave, and included a track by Kavinsky, "Nightcall" in the film's soundtrack, as well as David Grellier,
Johnny Jewel Johnny Jewel (born John David Padgett; May 31, 1974) is an American musician, record producer, composer, and visual artist. He is a multi-instrumentalist who is known for using all-analog equipment. Jewel has been recording and releasing materia ...
, and several tracks by
Cliff Martinez Cliff Martinez (born February 5, 1954) is an American musician and composer. Early in his career, Martinez was known as a drummer notably with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Captain Beefheart. Since the 1990s, he has worked primarily as a film sc ...
. ''EDM.com'' described Kavinsky as a "synthwave pioneer", while the horror blog '' Bloody Disgusting'' describes
Carpenter Brut Franck Hueso, better known by his stage name Carpenter Brut, is a French darksynth artist from Poitiers, France. He has released three EPs, ''EP I'' (2012), ''EP II'' (2013) and ''EP III'' (2015) which were collected and released together as t ...
as a "synthwave icon".


Popularity and spin-offs

In the early 2010s, the synthwave soundtracks of films such as '' Drive'' and '' Tron: Legacy'' attracted new fans and artists to the genre. ''Drive'' featured Kavinsky's " Nightcall" and, with College, "
A Real Hero "A Real Hero" is a song by French electronica artist College in collaboration with Electric Youth, released in 2010. The song was included as the eleventh track on Electric Youth's debut studio album '' Innerworld''. The track was used as a main ...
", which catapulted synthwave into mainstream recognition and solidified its stature as a music genre. The genre's popularity was furthered through its presence in the soundtracks of video games like '' Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon'' and ''
Hotline Miami ''Hotline Miami'' is a top-down shooter video game by Jonatan Söderström and Dennis Wedin, collectively known as Dennaton Games. The game was published by Devolver Digital and released on 23 October 2012 for Microsoft Windows. Set in 1989 Mi ...
'', as well as the
Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...
series '' Stranger Things,'' which featured synthwave pieces that accommodated the show's 1980s setting. ''Nerdglow''s Christopher Higgins cited Electric Youth and Kavinsky as the two most popular artists in synthwave in 2014. In the mid-2010s, "
fashwave Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, visual art style, and Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator, R&B, and lounge music from ...
" (a portmanteau of " fascist" and "synthwave") emerged as a largely instrumental
fusion genre A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from ''musical form'' and musical style, although in practice these terms are some ...
of synthwave and
vaporwave Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, visual art style, and Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator, R&B, and lounge music fro ...
, with political track titles and occasional soundbites, such as excerpts of speeches given by
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
. The phenomenon was described as self-identified fascists and alt-right members appropriating vaporwave music and aesthetics. Elsewhere, there was a growing trend of Russian synthwave musicians whose work espoused nostalgia for the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
, sometimes described as "
Sovietwave Sovietwave (also styled Soviet wave or Soviet-wave) is a subgenre of synthwave music and an online aesthetic which originates from a number of post-Soviet states, primarily Russia. It is characterized by themes associated with the Soviet Union (suc ...
". Synthwave remained a niche genre throughout the 2010s. In 2017, ''PC Gamer'' noted that synthwave influences were to be felt in early 2010s gaming releases, primarily of the "OutRun" subgenre ("tenets of the genre: angular concept cars screeching along retrofuturist highways through a miasma of purple and pink"), including ''
Hotline Miami ''Hotline Miami'' is a top-down shooter video game by Jonatan Söderström and Dennis Wedin, collectively known as Dennaton Games. The game was published by Devolver Digital and released on 23 October 2012 for Microsoft Windows. Set in 1989 Mi ...
'' and '' Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon''. Writing in 2019, ''
PopMatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, fi ...
'' journalist Preston Cram said, "Despite its significant presence and the high level of enthusiasm about it, synthwave in its complete form remains a primarily underground form of music." He added that "Nightcall" and "A Real Hero" remained "two of only a small number of synthwave songs produced to date that widely known outside the genre's followers." In 2020, "
Blinding Lights "Blinding Lights" is a song by Canadian singer the Weeknd. It was released on November 29, 2019, through XO and Republic Records, as the second single from his fourth studio album, '' After Hours'' (2020). The song was written and produced by ...
", a synthwave-influenced song by R&B artist
the Weeknd Abel Makkonen Tesfaye (born February 16, 1990), known professionally as the Weeknd, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor. Known for his sonic versatility and dark lyricism, his music explores escapism, romance, and ...
topped US record charts, the first song to do so during the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
. Matt Mills of ''Louder'' wrote in 2021 that the genre "had exploded into the mainstream, cramming dancefloors and soundtracking blockbusters."


See also

* ''
The Rise of the Synths ''The Rise of the Synths'' ( es, La rebelión de los sintes) is a 2019 documentary film written and directed by Iván Castell and narrated by filmmaker and composer John Carpenter. The film explores the origins and growth of the electronic mus ...
'' – 2019 synthwave documentary featuring John Carpenter *
1980s in music : ''For music from a year in the 1980s, go to 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 89'' This article includes an overview of the famous events and trends in popular music in the 1980s. The 1980s saw the emergence of ...
* Cyberspace *
Cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and c ...


References

Bibliography *


External links

* * {{Commons category-inline Electronic music genres Internet culture 2000s in music 2010s in music 2020s in music Articles containing video clips Retro style Microgenres