Dear listeners,
It’s Dave Renard, an editor on the Times Culture desk. It feels like every time I turn around lately, I bump into a soundtrack filled with classic synth-pop — Alphaville and Tears for Fears (anachronistically) scoring “Marty Supreme,” Pet Shop Boys and, uh, Alphaville again in the latest season of HBO’s buzzy finance-world drama “Industry.” It’s not hard to understand why, since these songs have a dramatic, romantic sweep that seems tailor-made for cinematic moments, plus they deliver an instant hit of nostalgia.
In assembling this playlist of synth-pop hits and deeper cuts, though, I was struck by how often a genre that tends to get tagged as frivolous tackles serious subject matter. Military imagery pops up again and again, in tracks from Heaven 17, Thomas Dolby and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark; as an armchair cultural psychiatrist, my diagnosis is that 1980s Britain had a case of Cold War nuclear dread, and the prescription was more keyboards. The pathos of Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy” also can’t be pigeonholed as love-struck pop fluff — not that there’s anything wrong with love-struck pop fluff when it’s done perfectly, as the lasting affection for “The Promise” by When in Rome will attest.
Here are 10 tracks from the heyday of ’80s synth-pop, many of them hiding in plain sight on albums that contain some of the biggest smashes of the era.
New York, ice cream, TV, travel, good times,
Dave
Listen along while you read.
1. The Human League: “The Things That Dreams Are Made Of”
The single biggest catalyst for my synth-pop awakening was probably when I heard a Human League song other than “Don’t You Want Me.” The group’s 1981 LP, “Dare,” is stacked with great tunes, including this opener that advocates living life to the fullest: “Take a cruise to China or a train to Spain / Go round the world again and again.” Don’t sleep on the companion album “Love and Dancing,” with tracks from “Dare” reworked in a “continuous mastermix” style and credited to the League Unlimited Orchestra.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Oppenheimer Analysis: “Don’t Be Seen With Me”
At Avalon Emerson’s recent record-release show at Night Club 101 in Manhattan, she performed an exuberant cover of this 1982 track by Oppenheimer Analysis, a British synth group brought back to attention in recent years through reissues on the Minimal Wave label. The lyrics embrace doubt and insecurity (“If I were you I’d be out on the town / Oh why oh why are you hanging around with a fool like me?”), but the overall vibe — especially on Emerson’s version, released on her “Perpetual Emotion Machine” EP — is somehow euphoric. Maybe fools get lucky sometimes.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Eurythmics: “Love Is a Stranger”
Annie Lennox’s multi-tracked voice goes to gorgeous, ethereal places on this lead track from the Eurythmics album “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” (Speaking of megahits …)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Ultravox: “Vienna”
This one practically gives me PTSD now: At a harrowing after-party on “Industry,” “Vienna” is used to ratchet up the tension in an episode as white-knuckle as the “Sister Christian” firecracker scene from “Boogie Nights.” “It’s not something you play at a party for exactly the reasons that we see there,” the show’s music supervisor, Ollie White, told GQ about the Ultravox track. “It’s way too emotional, and way too jarring, and someone’s going to have a bad trip on that.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Heaven 17: “Let’s All Make a Bomb”
Was Heaven 17 the most political synth-pop group? This life-during-nuclear-wartime jam (“Let’s celebrate and vaporize”) appears on the 1981 album “Penthouse and Pavement” alongside “Song With No Name,” about being worked down to the bone by society, and “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,” which requires no explanation.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Bronski Beat: “Smalltown Boy”
Terrific minor-key pop about the loneliness of growing up gay when no one around you understands — a theme that, notably, was openly acknowledged by the group and its record label when the song was released, certainly not the norm in 1984. “That was the point of the record and the point of Bronski Beat,” Colin Bell of London Records said to The Guardian in a 2024 interview for the song’s 40th anniversary. “I knew a rock star being gay did not have to be an issue.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. When in Rome: “The Promise”
Yes, this one was also used in the current season of “Industry” — but I’m limiting myself to two picks. (Apologies to Freeez, maybe next time!) In any case, I don’t think “The Promise” has ever been far from listeners’ minds since it hit the U.S. charts in 1988: It resurfaced over the closing credits of “Napoleon Dynamite” (2004), and was reimagined for the 2014 album “Metamodern Sounds in Country Music” by Sturgill Simpson, who clearly loves a left-field cover tune.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: “Enola Gay”
The jarring juxtaposition of catchy keyboard-driven melodies with lyrics that reference the World War II nuclear bombing of Hiroshima is at the crux of what makes “Enola Gay” one of O.M.D.’s most memorable songs. Interestingly, the track drew controversy not because it expressed ambivalence about the bombing but because some people interpreted it as a coded message promoting homosexuality, causing at least one BBC program to ban it.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. Wham!: “Blue (Armed With Love)”
Hats off to the musical detectives out there hunting down the mythical “full vocal mix” of this Wham! track — when their quest hit my radar, it made me curious enough to check out the released song, which is still wonderful even if the first half is an instrumental dub version. Twinkling, high-pitched keys and breathy vocals bring goose bumps from the word go, before George Michael does his (soulful, belting) thing on the back half.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
10. Thomas Dolby: “One of Our Submarines”
This song was released on a single with “She Blinded Me With Science,” which gave Thomas Dolby unlikely U.S. chart success but saddled him with the label of one-hit wonder. (He doesn’t deserve it, but neither does Gary Numan.) The B-side dives deep to bring across its metaphor of a crumbling empire embodied in a doomed sub (“Red lights flicker, sonar weak, air valve hissing open”), with dramatic keyboard stabs driving home the melancholy.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“10 Synth-Pop Songs That Bring the Drama” track list Track 1: The Human League, “The Things That Dreams Are Made Of” Track 2: Oppenheimer Analysis, “Don’t Be Seen With Me” Track 3: Eurythmics, “Love Is a Stranger” Track 4: Ultravox, “Vienna” Track 5: Heaven 17, “Let’s All Make a Bomb” Track 6: Bronski Beat, “Smalltown Boy” Track 7: When in Rome, “The Promise” Track 8: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, “Enola Gay” Track 9: Wham!, “Blue (Armed With Love)” Track 10: Thomas Dolby, “One of Our Submarines”
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David Renard is an editor and writer for the Arts section of The Times.
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