Tynan's Anger

Alright folks, it's confession time: I love synth rock.

I shouldn't have to confess this: I don't believe that synth pop, or any other genre, is fundamentally flawed, nor do I believe a rockist notion that unless it's got guitars and distortion, it's not rock 'n' roll.

What I do believe is that certain genres have a tendency to go overboard for the sake of popularity and sales. Synth pop may one of the worst examples of this in the history of pop music. I don't think that if I hate A Flock of Seagulls or The Killers, I have to hate all of synth rock. But if I give synth rock a vote a confidence, I can be accused of being a hypocrite for hating those bands. It's even touchier now, when borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered '80s reigns supreme.

This is a major concern if you've spent as much time in Brooklyn as I have.

Regardless of general attitudes, I do have particular tastes when it comes to synth rock. For me, the best synth rock songs generally have a few things in common:

1. No matter how synthetic the song, it still has to sound organic in some fashion. The worst synth rock plays up the artificial qualities to preposterous extremes.
2. While a fascination with technology is key to writing a good synth rock song, the best synth rock songs understand the dangers of the genre. No matter how technophilic a song may be, it has to understand the technophobic perspective.
3. There has to be more to the song than the synthesier. In particular, synth songs lend themselves particularly well to dense rhythm sections and innovative production and engineering.

With that in mind, here are my 10 favorite synth rock songs of all time, excluding tracks from this decade:

1) Gary Numan: Cars

A song that embodies everything I love about synth rock from the genre's greatest artist: haunting synths, brilliant loud bass, and lyrics that set the standard for all technology-obsessed lyrics. The high intellect of this brand of the idiot savant art (Numan later admitted to having Asperberg's syndrome) had previously struggled for a place in rock 'n' roll. Synth rock was the first major vehicle for a scientific mind in a pop musical setting.

See also: Gary Numan: Are Friends Electric?

2) James Chance & The Contortions: Flip Your Face

Flip Your Face - James Chance & The Contortions

No Wave took synth rock to its most dangerous, unruly depths. A standout track off the legendary No New York compilation is a classic of postmodern avant-garde music.

3) Kraftwerk: Europe Endless


Synth rock has never had a more dominating, high pitched, or cathartic recording quite like this song. It's almost impossible to think of another synth song this affecting. A landmark recording of this magnitude would have been impressive in any era, let alone in the jaded 1970s.

4) Devo: Jocko Homo
[Audio]

Synth rock originated as a vehicle for outsiders looking to experiment, and nerds of all stripes naturally flocked to it. This was one of the best Revenge of the Nerds moment in all of rock 'n' roll, a moment that permanently stamped Devo's legacy as one of the most indivualistic bands in rock history.

5) Joy Division: Atmosphere

Luckilly, the bleakest synth rock song ever written came from a groundbreaking band of remarkable intelligence and wit. Aided by Ian Curtis's poetic soul, "Atmosphere" overcame the risk of being seen as pretentious by being too beautiful to dismiss. Perhaps the only synth band that deserves the plethora of hype from rock fans this decade.

6) Wire: The 15th

154 is somewhat notorious for being one of synth pop's coldest albums. The album's standout track, however, is one of the warmest ever written, and possibly the best song Wire ever wrote (which is saying a lot).

7) Scratch Acid: Owner's Lament

Synths were an oft-overlooked fascination of the industrial noise rockers that emerged on Touch & Go in the 1980s underground. Scratch Acid, one of Kurt Cobain's favorite bands, produced an early highlight of synth's second wind. Noisy, aggressive, but still rather haunting, "Owner's Lament" used synths as well as any noise rock song, which helped fuel the remarkable creativity that the American underground produced in the second half of the '80s.

8) Pink Floyd: Welcome to the Machine

The best track on what is probably Pink Floyd's best album musically, “Welcome to the Machine,” off 1975's Wish You Were Here, was an early indication from a classic rock band that synths weren't a mere novelty device.

9) The Clash: This is Radio Clash

It's easy to forget the New Wave direction The Clash took in the  early '80s, especially for Clash fans that would prefer to forget that Sandinista! ever happened. Nonetheless, "This Is Radio Clash" was a highlight of The Clash's later period. Combining the band's signature love of reggae, dub, and ska with a synth track that was subtle but impossible to ignore, "Radio Clash" reminded a New Wave scene that was rapidly being exploited in the mainstream of the genre's artistic and cultural roots.

10) Pulp: Common People

As synth rock was coming to something of an end of an era as a dominant force in pop music, Pulp couldn't have provided a better capstone. No less gorgeous musically than any classic synth song (and perhaps the genre's most epic song),  Jarvis Cocker's lyrics addressed New Wavers' tendency to posture under the independent guise, which had proven to be a permanent problem with the genre. That problem has only made the song more poignant since its 1995 release.

Labels: 1980s, gary numan, kraftwerk, new wave, no wave, pop music, poseurs, scratch acid, synth rock, top ten list