The Best 80s Synth-Pop Songs You Need to Hear

Synth-pop is the sound of the synthesizer becoming pop music's lead voice. The genre exploded out of the UK at the very start of the 1980s, with The Human League, OMD, Soft Cell and Depeche Mode taking the hardware experiments of Kraftwerk and David Bowie's Berlin trilogy and turning them into Top 10 singles.

The starting point is The Human League's 'Don't You Want Me' (1981) — the song that made synth-pop a chart-topping global phenomenon. Soft Cell's 'Tainted Love' (1981) is its perfect companion, an electronic cover that became one of the era's biggest singles.

Depeche Mode's 'Just Can't Get Enough' (1981) shows the genre at its most innocent. By 1986's 'Stripped' and 1989's 'Personal Jesus', the same band had pushed synth-pop into darker, almost industrial territory.

OMD's 'Enola Gay' (1980) is one of the most ambitious synth-pop singles ever — a melodic earworm built around the bombing of Hiroshima. Pet Shop Boys' 'West End Girls' (1985) is the genre at its most sophisticated and ironic.

Don't miss New Order's 'Blue Monday' (1983), the best-selling 12-inch single of all time and the song that fused synth-pop with the dance music that would dominate the next decade.

If you want one album to start with, The Human League's Dare (1981) is a perfect introduction. Pet Shop Boys' Please (1986) is the genre at its sleek, urbane peak.

Synth-pop never really went away — almost every modern pop hit owes it something. From The Weeknd to Dua Lipa to CHVRCHES, you can hear its DNA throughout contemporary music.