With an 80s edge as sharp as the one carved by The Human League paired with the same spiritual zeal of Stevie Nicks, the latest single from the ever-ascending Australian pop icon, ELSKA carries enough of the nostalgic new wave feel-good factor to leave you exhilarated by the swells of retro aesthetics, but Flashbackis so much more to an ode to seemingly everyone’s new favourite era.
The juxtaposing lyrics reminisce on crying on the bathroom floor – yea, we’ve all been there – while the shimmering aesthetic of the track affectingly attests to how we all have to write our own redemption story, which also goes for survivors of sexual abuse and assault. If the sticky-sweet hooks in the stellar four-to-the-floor bop don’t convince you that dark days don’t set a blueprint for your future, just wait until the harmonies start to layer into a synthesised choir.
Prior to the release of Flashback, ELSKA performed at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, collaborated with the world-renowned Brad Hosking on a track, and became a semi-finalist in the International Songwriting Competition. She has come a seriously long way since she made her debut in 2018. We can’t wait to see her make more Olympian strides.
Flashback was officially released on October 6; stream it on Spotify.
Love it or hate it, the retro-futurism of synthwave and retrowave is here to stay, at least until a new sonic trend comes along, which is hopefully sooner rather than later because the music industry can only take so many up-and-coming artists assimilating The Midnight, Gunship, and Timecop1983.
Whether you delve into R&B, rock, pop, or electronica genres, you are bound to find artists struggling to leave the neon-soaked iconography of the 80s in the rearview mirror and determined to tap into society’s lust for nostalgia.
The 21st-Century Obsession with 80s Aesthetics
The music industry is far from the arena choked with retro-futuristic aesthetics; the wider landscape of pop culture is luminous with backlit lights; films such as the 2011 hit Drive, the Hotline Miami videogame, and TV shows such as Stranger Things can all be pinpointed as culprits in this cult-like obsession with nostalgic synth-driven soundscapes.
While neither electro-pop nor synthwave has ever been fully shunned from the mainstream, it is back with an analogue vengeance with more artists inclined to tap into the feel-good factor of nostalgic melodies, characteristic synth lines and pulsing rhythmic beats and patterns.
It is far from just the addictive hooks perpetuating the appeal of the retro genres. The desolation, dystopia, and isolation of the COVID-19 era have also been attributed to the unreckonable force of retro-futurism.
During the multiple lockdowns, which paused live music and left people confined to their homes, people found themselves finding escapism via music, and notably, there were few better escapist avenues than the ones synthwave provided. Take the success of Charlie XCX’s album, How I’m Feeling Now, and anything the Weeknd has ever created as a prime example; The Weeknd is still the most streamed artist on Spotify with 111.2 million monthly listeners; his hit single, Blinding Lights broke records after it became the most streamed single history. To date, it has garnered over 3.827 billion streams.
A Brief History of Synthwave
Synthwave started to emerge in the mid-2000s, when the French house producers, David Grellier and Kavinsky started to emanate 80s film soundtracks in their soundscapes.
Other musicians and producers who jumped on the bandwagon were keen to assimilate the likes of Tangerine Dream, New Order, and Gary Numan, while visual artists were instantly obsessed with neon lights, Ferraris, and pretty much anything to do with Miami, and John Carpenter seemed to be at the epicentre of it all until the premiere of the Ryan Gosling film, Drive, in 2011. Shortly after, the likes of Cassius, Stardust, and Daft Punk played a pivotal role in the glamourisation of 80s imagery.
Initially, synthwave represented a rejection of the 90s sonic styles; today, there is little semblance of rebellion with the mainstream appeal of it. Even Taylor Swift has hopped on the bandwagon with her 2022 album, Midnights.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Just as the rock and hip-hop genres managed to diversify themselves, we have little doubt that innovative artists will come along with the ability to make the synthwave sound a little less derivative. However, as nostalgia is much a part of the music as the 4 / 4-time signatures, which provide a kick on every beat of the bar, and the staple drum machines and synths, it’s unlikely that the evolution of the genre will ever blast into an entirely new stratosphere. But for what it is worth, Synthwave has already spawned swathes of subgenres. To name a few, they include:
Dreamwave – the downtempo sister of synthwave, which comes with higher tones and higher frequencies.
Scifiwave – an iteration of synthwave with a heavier emphasis on orchestral and cinematic synthetics.
Vaporwave – a more satirical and ambient exploration of 80s and 90s stylings, which is often confused with synthwave.
Sovietwave – surreally everything that it says on the tin; soundscapes which euphonically encompass the fall of the Soviet Union.
Darkwave – a darker and more gothic approach to synth wave; a genre defined by the sounds of Carpenter Brut and Perturbator.
When we asked AI to predict the future of the genre, it had even bigger ideas, envisioning the genre reaching even bigger heights with augmented and virtual reality immersive experiences for music fans, hologram-littered visual shows and entire festivals dedicated to synthwave artists.
Time will only tell if the genre can sustain its legacy, but as technology evolves, there is plenty of expectation that synthwave will follow suit. Although, after the excessive appropriation of the 80s sound, there is every chance that a new revivalist era will begin.
After all, trends work in cycles, which means a resurgence in Britpop, grunge, and nu-metal may be becoming overdue! It used to be that trend cycles lasted for 20 years, but internet culture has wreaked havoc with those trend cycles. Now, the music industry is era’s game.
The dance-pop icon Riley Rex asserted her claim to the LA pop crown with her infectiously flawless Halloween hit, The Shadowy Place. It may just be the biggest Halloween hit since Kernkraft 400 delivered Zombie Nation in 1999. It at least stands up to the debauched decadence in Emerge by Fischerspooner while incorporating the contemporary magnetism of Dua Lipa, Ava Max, and Charli XCX.
By contrasting the dark lyrical themes with the hypersonic textures and upbeat pace in the polished production, Rex extended euphoria to those who need it most with The Shadowy Place, which breaks EDM pop boundaries in definitively sensuous style.
The single, which was written while she was enrolled on a course with One Republic’s Ryan Tedder, is a narration of the escapist ideation which consumes you when you’re stuck in a pit of anxiety and depression. The bass-driven electro-pop hit may not have what it takes to cure mental illness, but you couldn’t ask for a more potent sonic serotonin source.
The Shadowy Place hit the airwaves on October 6; stream it on SoundCloud.
Thankfully, the title of Jay Hofman’s latest single, I Can’t Sing, isn’t a disclaimer for the dire vocal performance that will defile your ears as soon as you hit play. Instead, the self-deprecatingly sweet funked-up indie electro-pop hit shares a dilemma that every non-muso diehard romantic will have been stung by, the compulsion to write and sing a love song despite a discernible lack of musical talent.
Maybe ironically, maybe entirely purposefully, the Polish singer-songwriter who is currently residing in the UK crafted the kind of love song that everyone who is lucky enough to be head over heels will want to put on a playlist for the objects of their desire. By switching between rap-style spoken word verses and auto-tuned harmonies in the chorus, even if there was weight to the claim that Hofman can’t sing, it would never have soured the soundscape that is as electrifying as a Daft Punk hit.
I Can’t Sing debuted on September 8th; fall in love with it via Spotify.
For his latest single, Reach You, the independent Czech music producer, DJ, and songwriter Goshok teamed up with Otto Palmborg to reach the pinnacle of electronica fervour.
Ironically, we couldn’t get his last single, On My Mind, off ours; if Reach You is anything to go by, his talents in infusing his momentous Kygo-inspired tracks with visceral emotions have become superlatively honed. Once you hit play, you’ll be immersed in a bitter-sweet hit that errs on the side of affectionate rapture. If you know how it feels to be caught in the middle of a relationship that forces you to explore the pleasure-pain parallel, the resonance in Reach You will be phenomenal.
By pulling in elements from across the EDM spectrum to enliven his tropical house edge and augment his pop hooks until they’re ensnaringly sharp, Goshok created a hit that could facilitate his dream to become the first producer from Czechia to feature on the line-ups at Tomorrowland, Coachella, and Balaton Sound.
Reach You hit the airwaves on August 25; stream it on Spotify.
Get hooked on the reverb-heavy retrowave synth lines in the latest electro-pop hit, Rent Free, from the Alaskan icon in the making, Zach Haselow.
With a soundscape that finds the middle ground between the Weeknd and the Midnight, it is all too easy to get into the lush electronic grooves of Rent Free, which soulfully pays homage to the phenomenon of all-consuming romantic obsession while traversing the insecurities that desire can forcibly manifest.
The humbly sweet hit couldn’t be purer in its passion or more polished in its production; the melodies seem to effervesce around the funk-dripping basslines that will arrest your rhythmic pulses and refuse to let go until long after the fadeout. After spending over a decade perfecting the art of songwriting and producing, Zach Haselow has achieved a sonic signature that is as honed as it is distinctive.
Rent Free made its debut on August 18th; stream it on Spotify.
Kid of the Star System is back in orbit once again with her latest single, Sleepwalking, and we couldn’t be more stoked about the interstellar return of the London-based visionary who switches between dimensions and genres to deliver atmospherically electrifying sci-fi enhanced vignettes of our grittily dystopic times.
The trap beat in the intro quickly evolves into a hook-rife platform of darkwave electro-pop that Kid of the Star System uses to implant her domineeringly smooth vocal lines that carry the exhilarating seduction of the entire Deftones discography. You won’t be short on emotions to feel when listening to the gospel of Kid of the Star System’s ethereal space odyssey, which could rival a black hole in the darkness it contains.
With the sole aim of bringing as much fun and chaos to her music as possible, the genre-melding artist is one for the radar if you always look to music for inspiration and empowerment. Especially as her sophomore LP, Luminous, which promises to challenge her listeners and push them past their limitations, is on the periphery.
Silence fell after the 2022 debut EP, But What If There Isn’t?, from the Chicago-native Softmax; in her time away from the airwaves, she honed her craft and primed herself for her latest single, Swishers.
Co-produced by Joel Ford, of How to Dress Well fame, and Berlin’s premier electronica producer, Gabriel Gifford, Swishers sets a dramatically Lynchian tone to create a dystopian synthpop backdrop for the portrayal of inwardly imploding isolation while everyone falsifies their lives online.
The sentiment is just as resonant as the score orchestrated to depict the agonisingly disjointing feelings. Clearly, Softmax has a talent for reflecting the rawest facets of the human experience back at us. The syncopated beats and oscillating synths paint a portrait of how it feels when black holes of alienation form as a fixture in the arrangement of your bedroom furniture.
In her own words: “It’s about wanting to connect with the world and understand people while feeling further and further from it,”
Swishers will hit the airwaves on August 9th as a courtesy of the London-based indie record label, Psychotic Reaction Music. Stream it on Spotify.
The LA-hailing singer-songwriter ARO singlehandedly defined the future of pop with her debut evocative synth masterpiece, Let Me Go.
With far more soul than your average earworm and her sonic signature scribing distinction through every succinct progression, this emotionally heated hit is the ultimate moody moving-on anthem.
By painting with light and dark tones, the process of coming into your own away from what no longer serves you was euphonically visualised in Let Me Go. With just as much lyrical depth as Mitski and Louise Dacus paired with an electro-pop score that cushions the blows of the sharp lyricism with lush reverb, it is only a matter of time before ARO is considered LA pop royalty.
“So much of my art is about giving the darker parts of myself a platform. There are these aspects of myself that cannot be tamed, and so instead of beating my head against a wall trying to control them I’ve found that my art allows me to be in relationship with them. When I write I’m not butting in to tell them how they should be, I’m not trying to get them to behave, or do better, or have a positive outlook, I’m just letting that part of me speak freely. And I learn a lot about myself through this process.”
Still trying to discover your ultimate high-energy anthem of the summer? Gaze right into the debut earworm from the one-woman house-pop powerhouse IZZYE, and find the addictive choruses you’ve been searching for.
‘LATELY’ is IZZYE’s first official debut single after her single Dance Forever landed a placement in the Love Island 2023 Winter Final episode. With her powered-by-soul strident vocal lines easily dominating the infectiously high-octane hooks, the hit has ‘playlist staple’ branded across the glossy radio-ready production.
Not content with creating run-of-the-mill floor-filler fodder, IZZYE worked with her co-songwriter, Darren Martyn, to orchestrate a liberatingly empowering hit which goes to show that even when you have been cast aside by someone who pretended to be all-in, being bitter and scorned is never the only option.
Stream the official music video for LATELY, which premiered on June 7th via YouTube.
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