10 Albums to Get You Into Synth Pop

10 Albums to Get You Into Synth Pop 1. Kraftwerk - Die Mensch-Maschine [The Man Machine] (1978) It is not hyperbolic to say that German progressive electronic pioneers Kraftwerk are one of the most important and influential groups in musical history. Without their trailblazing and groundbreaking slew of releases in the '70s, modern music would not be the same. They influenced countless artists directly (and even more indirectly), and they were pivotal for the inception and formation of synth pop as a genre. Their magnum opus, "The Man Machine" saw them move away from mapping the autobahn and the railway, and instead turn inward to the pop song itself. The rhythms are rigid, the melodies unexpectedly warm. "The Model" is as clean a three-minute pop construction as the decade produced, sung with deadpan tenderness. Emil Schult's cover, all constructivist red and black, framed the four of them as product and icon at once. This is the record where the machine stopped merely pulsing and started to sing. 2. Sparks - № 1 in Heaven (1979) For a groundbreaking rock group like Sparks, their 1979 pivot to the full embrace of synthesisers and electronics was a pivotal step forward for the genre as a whole. The Mael brothers torched their rock band and handed the keys to Giorgio Moroder, whose sequencers churn beneath the whole thing like a motor that never stops. Russell's falsetto soars over pure electronic pulse; Ron's lyrics stay arch and glittering even at disco tempo. "The Number One Song in Heaven", one of the greatest synth pop songs of all time, stretches a pop single into something closer to a suite. It drew the map for the synth-pop duo and influenced countless artists to come. 3. Yellow Magic Orchestra - Solid State Survivor (1979) Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi, and Ryuichi Sakamoto built their technopop out of the newest microprocessors and played it all with an endearing grin. "Rydeen" gallops on bright sequenced melody; "Behind the Mask" is so indelible that Michael Jackson and Eric Clapton would later come knocking seeking to recreate its singular magic and grandeur. Where Western electronic music often leaned cold and severe, YMO found video-game color and wit in the circuitry. They proved the synthesizer could be playful, and pointed forward to electro and hip-hop as much as to synth pop. A groundbreaking, seminal release that proves synth pop can be delightfully upbeat while searching for deeper meaning within its circuits. 4. Simple Minds - New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) (1982) Before the stadiums swallowed them up and commodified their most revered singles, Simple Minds made their definitive artistic statement: a shimmering, near-spiritual record where synth washes and Mel Gaynor's crisp drums build toward something like rapture. "Promised You a Miracle" and "Someone Somewhere in Summertime" ache upward, Jim Kerr chasing transcendence in the chorus. Every surface glows and floats with the sound of awakening. It's the sound of synth pop reaching for the sublime rather than the dancefloor, exploring what it means to be a person in this modern world through dense production and meticulously programmed synthesis. 5. Anne Clark - Changing Places (1983) Anne Clark didn't sing so much as recite, her clipped spoken poetry laid over stark, insistent electronics. A pivotal step forward for the sub-genre of minimal synth, "Sleeper in Metropolis" pounds forward like a train through a dark city, words and machine locked in the same anxious pulse. There's no comfort here and no chorus to hide in, just voice and sequencer holding an unblinking stare. Anne Clark married poetic craft to stark synthesis decades before it became a popular commodity in the indie world and the underground. She pushed synth pop toward the literary and the severe, and lit a path the darker end of electronic music would follow for years. A truly groundbreaking release. 6. Tears for Fears - Songs From the Big Chair (1985) In the 1980's, there were truly four defining synth pop groups: New Order, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, and Tear for Fears. Of these four, none were able to so seamlessly blend the lines between pop rock, new wave, and synth pop music, and do so while so poetically and philosophically touch upon the human condition in thought-provoking ways. "Songs From the Big Chair" is the breakout, defining album for Tears for Fears in many ways. Featuring lush, pristine production and heartfelt performances throughout, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith took the anxieties of primal therapy (the "big chair"), and built widescreen pop around them. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" effortlessly calcifies Cold War tensions while "Shout" turns catharsis into an anthem you can bellow. The synths are lush, the ambition rock-sized, the feeling never faked. A truly groundbreaking album. 7. New Order - Substance (1987) My favorite synth-pop release of all time, and quite possibly the greatest introductory exploration of the genre and why it matters in a grander sense. After Ian Curtis' untimely and tragic demise, the remaining members of Joy Division could have respectfully hung up their instruments and departed. That would have been easy and expected. They didn't do that. Instead, they renamed their group and reinvented themselves boldly in much more than name. After having defined the post-punk sounds of the late '70s and early '80s, they arose as New Order, and the group came to define the next several decades of electronic-oriented, synth-heavy, soulful pop music and the shape of it to come. This collection of singles is the group at their absolute best. From legendary, mythic singles like "Blue Monday", to the more despondent "True Faith", which explores primal fears in thought-provoking ways. This is the blueprint for all synth pop to come, and it is perfect. 8. Depeche Mode - Violator (1990) After releasing a slew of incredible albums that helped shape the dark and emotionally visceral caliber of electronic-heavy pop music of the 1980's, Depeche Mode released their defining, magnum opus, "Violator" at the beginning of the '90s. The group sculpted these songs into sleek, cavernous shapes, and Depeche Mode finally sounded as vast as they'd always aimed to. "Personal Jesus" struts on a blues riff turned mechanical; "Enjoy the Silence" is a near-perfect marriage of gospel yearning and synthetic soul. Dave Gahan's baritone fills the whole echoing cathedral. This is synth pop gone grand and gothic. It's arena-sized, immaculately bleak, and the genre's glossiest peak. 9. Carly Rae Jepsen - E•MO•TION (2015) Well into the 2010's, the girl who made "Call Me Maybe" an international sensation arrived with what is undoubtedly one of the definitive modern synth pop albums. It's an album beautifully romantic, unpretentious, and intoxicatingly interwoven with electronics as ecstatic longing and emotion. Long after the '80s revival became a reflex, Jepsen committed to it with total sincerity and made it sing again. "Run Away with Me" opens on a saxophone fanfare so brazen it dares you not to feel it, and the whole record follows through on that rush. Every hook is engineered for maximum ache, craft in service of pure feeling. It turned a critical cult loose on the idea that unashamed synth pop could still be an art. 10. Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk (2024) The proof that even in the mid 2020's, synth pop is still evolving and moving forward into new, adventurous sonic lanes, and thus far, one of the most daring and interesting pop records of the 21st Century. Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin build hyper-detailed, glittering pop around a concept of transformation: the ideal self vs. the real self, the concept of personas and masks, the fluidity of consciousness, the cell that becomes the butterfly. Here, songs mutate mid-flight, dissolving into psychedelic interludes and reassembling as something stranger and brighter. The production is dense enough to reward a dozen listens and immediate enough to hit on the first. It's proof synth pop's futurism is alive and still reaching, the freshest landmark on this list. Some Other Picks: New Order - Low-Life Kraftwerk - Computerwelt Andy Oppenheimer - New Mexico Tears for Fears - The Hurting Propaganda - A Secret Wish Javiera Mena - Esquemas juveniles George Clanton - Slide Depeche Mode - Black Celebration MGMT - Little Dark Age Pet Shop Boys - Introspective New Order - Power, Corruption & Lies George Clanton - 100% Electronica The Knife - Silent Shout Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Architecture & Morality YMO - Technodelic P-Model - P-Model Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles (II) Madonna - Madonna (1983) The Blue Nile - Hats Depeche Mode - Music for the Masses Some Other Picks Pt. 2: Magdalena Bay - Mercurial World Martin Dupont - Hot Paradox Neon Indian - VEGA INTL Night School Susanne Sundfor - Ten Love Songs Talk Talk - It's My Life Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles TRST - TRST Strawberry Switchblade - Strawberry Switchblade Tubeway Army - Replicas Depeche Mode - ELO - Time Code Porter Robinson - Nurture P-MODEL - Electronic Tragedy/~ENOLA Yellow Magic Orchestra - Yellow Magic Orchestra New Order - Technique Los Prisioneros - Corazones Virus - Locura Twin Shadow - Forget Ultravox - Vienna Ultravox - The Collection Wang Chung - To Live and Die in L.A. Some Other Picks Pt. 3: Washed Out - Life of Leisure The Weeknd - After Hours Susumu Hirasawa - Aurora Bladee & Ecco2k - Crest Alex Cameron - Forced Witness The Radio Dept. - Pet Grief Hard Corps - Metal & Flesh Heaven 17 - Penthouse and Pavement The Human League - Dare John Maus - Love Is Real John Maus - We Must Become the Pitiless Center of Ourselves The Magnetic Fields - The Charm of the Highway Strip The Magnetic Fields - Holiday John Foxx - Metamatic Lemon Demon - Spirit Phone Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual M83 - Saturdays = Youth Pet Shop Boys - Actually Pet Shop Boys - Very Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle Soft Cell - Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret