What song was the start of 80s synth pop

bluedex

For me it was Video Killed the Radio Star, by The Buggles.
It's a very personal choice/opinion though. I'd love to hear other opinions.

Heroditas

Dreaming of Me by Depeche Mode in 1981, mainly because Vince Clarke was such an important part of synth pop

npresto

Visage - Fade to Gray 1980

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbMAY2Mx1bE

ClosedAccountFuzzy

Blue Monday (New Order)

Really stands out to me as just pure, minimalist early 80s synth / electronica. I wouldn’t think they were trying to be classified it as pop though. It’s almost trying to be stripped down anti-pop, complete with a very deliberate zero-effort look in performances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYH8DsU2WCk

1983 - remains best selling U.K. 12” of all time.

Larbre34

Gary Numan, Cars.

It's factually indisputable, because it was the first No. 1 of the 1980s, after Pink Floyd's ABITW Pt. 2, which had carried forward from 1979.

And so, its the daddy.

Joe_ Public

If you're talking about the start then i think the answer might be Tubeway Army and Are Friends Electric? Though it's from '79.

Sparks were pretty influential too I'd say, kind of bridge between new wave and so called synth pop. Was never a huge fan of the genre but two songs i still really like are Heaven 17 Play To Win and Let's All Make A Bomb.

Irishjg

I’m going to throw this bunch into the mix. Kraftwerk. They started in the late 60s but found success with their 4th album “Autobahn” released in 1974. The title track single hit 11 in the UK charts and 25th in the US.

ClosedAccountFuzzy

While it was created in 1977 this is very much a bridge to, and predictor of, most of 1980s synth pop that followed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm-ISatLDG0

Donna Summer - ‘I feel love’
Producer: Giorgio Moroder

44 years later it still sounds fresh.

ClosedAccountFuzzy

Irishjg wrote: »

I’m going to throw this bunch into the mix. Kraftwerk. They started in the late 60s but found success with their 4th album “Autobahn” released in 1974. The title track single hit 11 in the UK charts and 25th in the US.

Apparently RTE 2 used to use that Autobahn video to fill gaps in the late 1970s. It was very familiar to Irish audiences.

magicbastarder

You might like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjDHVP0WAYc

(it's an hour and a half of viewing in total)

note that phil oakey mentions kraftwerk and summers/moroder as their 'we can do this' moment.

vektarman

This is late 70's but for me it helped set up 1980's synth pop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEnx9xS79Lc

magicbastarder

Larbre34 wrote: »

It's factually indisputable, because it was the first No. 1 of the 1980s

that's a very narrow way of defining it!
what is called '80s synth pop' began before the 80s - as mentioned above, 'are friends electric' is definitely part of the movement, it just got here before the 80s did.

ClosedAccountFuzzy

The movement was basically driven by the availability and maturity of modern synthesisers, samplers and sequencers. Those began to really take shape in the mid to late 1970s.

By the 1980s that had become mainstream music technology.

The other huge breakthrough was MIDI, which provided standards to interconnect digital instruments. Before that the technology was proprietary, which protocols like CV/Gate that were often fairly specific to one manufacturer, notably used by systems like Roland MC-8 MicroComposer.

There's a whole raft of digital, semi digital, computer controlled analogue and so on that emerged and made things easier. Systems like later versions of Synclavier I etc etc that emerged as viable in the early 1980s but they were initially extremely expensive and often required significant coding skills for computer based systems or electronic engineering hardware skills for analogue systems, so as the tech evolved and became ever more accessible, it became easier for more artists to use and it moved outside labs and expensive studios and things became interesting.

I feel Love was put together by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte using a rather complex Moog modular analogue synth rig, a sequencer and 16 track tape and Donna Summers vocals were basically used as an instrument in the composition, which isn't unusual now, but was then.

The whole thing is done in 20 second chunks as the Moog had difficulty staying in tune.

But it's a rather remarkable piece of music that's regarded as being one that helped to define the whole genre.

If you want to go very far back into the dawn of electronica check out someone like Deila Derbyshire's (BBC Radiophonic Workshop) compositions from the 1960s. She's famously responsible for the Doctor Who theme and was building her own instruments back in the day.

There were a lot of rather serious pioneers of this genre, also many of them quite geeky and unsung, but they changed music.

Delia Derbyshire in 1963:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwQIgGQLOQ8

This was found discarded in tapes she was just playing with and had stored in cornflakes boxes in her attic. It's at least 30 years ahead of its time.

In the 60s she couldn't even get the studios to take her seriously (sexist attitudes of the era - Decca literally told her that they didn't employ women in their studios) and ended up working for the UN, a stint as a piano teacher before getting a job in an obscure unit at the BBC. She ended her career at the BBC in the 1970s and worked as a radio operator for British Gas, in an art gallery and book shops etc. A remarkably unrecognised pioneer of electronic music.

She was a mathematician and musician, daughter of a Coventry sheet metal worker and very much one of those musicians who should be known a lot more than she is.

Had she not been there, this would never have happened and bear in mind she built instruments from oscillators, basic circuits and used tape effects to do all of this. The technology was was not available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75V4ClJZME4

Her archives were taken out of the Cornflakes boxes and are now permanently at the University of Manchester.



Delia Derbyshire 1937-2001.

There are a number of people like that dotted through electronic music who blazed a trail to 1980s synth pop, 1990s and later house, techno, dance music culture and everything that followed.

A bit of an homage, but she's just one of those ppl I'm always shocked went so unrecognised for so long.

noby

FuzzyThinking wrote: »

I feel Love was put together by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte

The whole thing is done in 20 second chunks as the Moog had difficulty staying in tune.
.

Great post.

Also, they hadn't perfected the kick drum sound on the moog, so that was played live, and the drummer had trouble keeping a constant beat playing just the kick - another factor in the stop start nature of the recording.

Putting The Model on the b side of Computer Love (against the wishes of Kraftwerk) , and making it into a hit single was a huge step in the synth pop journey.

AndrewJRenko

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This by Eurhythmics for me - can still remember the feeling of "wow, this is different".

Flinty997

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This by Eurhythmics for me - can still remember the feeling of "wow, this is different".

1983. Dates are important.

I always thought Kraft work were the grandad's of Synth. Never been my thing. I started with Depeche Mode and bands of that generation.

NewbridgeIR

Larbre34 wrote: »

Gary Numan, Cars.

It's factually indisputable, because it was the first No. 1 of the 1980s, after Pink Floyd's ABITW Pt. 2, which had carried forward from 1979.

And so, its the daddy.

Cars was #1 in September 1979.

ShaneU

Giorgio Moroder - Chase (1978)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViN2bRGrBx8

NewbridgeIR

This is a great compilation that covers the origins of the genre.
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Musik-Music-Musique-1980-The-Dawn-Of-Synth-Pop/release/15701660

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPqdUgAGIcU