Synthwave in 2022
Popularised in 2015 and ‘16, synthwave is now a mature genre with various younger subgenres (this article does an excellent job exploring this history). In recent years, mainstream artists such as Dua Lipa, The Weeknd and 070 Shake have incorporated retro synth sounds into their music. Like dubstep, since synthwave became a significant enough cultural phenomenon to permeate the mainstream, various purists have claimed its best days have past. While early synthwave has a unique, nostalgic charm—as captured by the opening credits of Drive—2022’s electric gems are incredibly refined:
1. A.L.I.S.O.N, Hotel Pools - Escape
2. Maximum Love - Feeling It
3. Hotel Pools, Voyage - Focus
4. Maximum Love - Forever
5. YOUTH 83, A.L.I.S.O.N - Lamp Light
6. Tonebox - Mid Drive
7. Voyage - Sequence
8. A.L.I.S.O.N - Spiral
9. Martin Roth - Synth City
10. Neon Nox - Tunnels
The synthwave community is somewhat of an anomaly in that it mostly exists online. For many, synthwave is the go-to soundtrack to their digital pursuits, such as streaming games, creating multimedia, or browsing the web. While there are certainly ‘active listens’, most synthwave tracks work as excellent ‘passive listening’ to accompany other activities. Ironically, my favourite listening sessions are when I'm not listening and the tracks are just shuffling away in the background. A state of timeless trance is often induced by the ethereal sound and retro-futurist influences of the music.
The genre can be said to be the sound of retro-futurism. The regions in which synthwave is popular overlap heavily with those that were originally grasped by futurist frenzies in the 70s and 80s. The predominant emotive motifs of the music seem to be those of dynamism and dustsceawung (Old English: 'consideration of the dust'). The dynamic tempo of the synthesised music embodies futurism, and the fading wave sounds embody dustsceawung, the contemplation of the transience of things. I find these two motifs are present to some degree in every synthwave track.
Past futurist frenzies have largely been byproducts of the Cold War era. In that light, the following statistics make more sense. Ranked by country, the historical, relative per-capita searches for ‘synthwave’ on Google are as follows:
Finland (100); Norway (76); Lithuania (73); Czechia (72); Serbia (69); Hungary (67); Sweden (64); Australia (63); Canada (63); US (59).
Interestingly, in terms of the relative per-capita searches in the past 12 months, China has surpassed even Finland: China (100); Finland (90); Norway (88).
Between listenership proliferating in new regions and the development of new subgenres, synthwave was very much alive for 2022. With the resurfacing of futurism in the ‘20s, and with a new culture in the digital era that increasingly looks to the past, there is much opportunity for synthwave to evolve and influence throughout the coming decade.