It was back in 2015-2016 that I slowly started becoming aware of a new musical genre called synthwave: a form of electronic music that was unashamed in its love for the eighties and unabashed in how it stole its entire aesthetic from that period. Granted, these weren’t the earliest days of the style itself, but they were the early days of the scene. Kavinsky had released his first EP a decade before, and there were a few other artists who’d tapped that same vein, but I think it’s safe to pinpoint the emergence of an actual scene at about the aforementioned time, give or take a year.

For a child of the 80’s like me, the appeal of the genre was apparent and instant. Not only had I been a fan of 80’s synthpop for years – Alphaville, Camouflage, Berlin and Depeche Mode are still personal favourites – there was also an inherent, nostalgic familiarity to every facet of the style.

Of course, synthwave never was about reliving the 80’s, of recreating that period in time. No, it was the 80’s on steroids: bigger, brighter, shinier, happier. More neon, more lasers, more synths, more everything. Synthwave has always been about a heavily idealized, stereotypied version of the 80’s. And that’s fine. The real 80’s in Finland at least were pretty drab.

I remember first hearing Perturbator, Mega Drive, Carpenter Brut and throngs of other prominent names of the time. It felt like every time I opened up NewRetroWave’s YouTube channel, a new diamond was just waiting to be discovered. Of course, that’s how it tends to be when you discover a new genre. You’re still not familiar with the stereotypes and conventions of it, you haven’t heard the same thing repeated umpteen times, and you haven’t grown weary of it yet. That’s part of it.

But it was more, something more fundamental. When getting into metal two decades earlier, I had to sift through a lot of bands I didn’t like, bands who weren’t in the style I liked, bands who didn’t remind me of the few bands I liked initially. In contrast, virtually every synthwave artist tapped into those same stereotypes and the same blueprints for their sound. The hyper powered 80’s style music mixed with imagery lifted from 80’s popular culture was a strongly defining common thread, which defined virtually all of the projects and artists. The music was much more cut from the same cloth. It was (and continues to be) a true Internet age niché genre based on a rather narrow concept.

In those early days, that was wonderful. I’d found a new thing I loved, and the bustling scene was brimming with more of the same good stuff.

You all see where this is heading, right? Eventually, the above started to turn on itself. The lack of stylistic breadth or conceptual variation meant that before too long, new projects no longer had that exciting aura. Everything felt like I’d heard it before. And certainly, the strong but narrow visual style of the genre essentially encouraged copycats and derivatives.

But that’s not the real issue. I mean, it happens: you fall in love with a genre, you fall out of love with a genre. Maybe later you fall back in love. I spent almost a decade listening to barely any metal.

The real issue is that any time synthwave has tried to expand its horizons, it’s lost its essence; its soul. Leaving behind the retro 80’s aesthetic, as some darksynth and cyberpunk acts have done, means losing an essential part of synthwave’s charm and appeal. It’s no longer the same aesthetic and the same cultural references so many of us fell in love with. Trying to expand the horizons musically by incorporating in increasing amounts metal, 90’s influences or other genres is an equally losing bet: the musical identity is lost.

And so, synthwave finds itself in a bit of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind of situation. Rejecting evolution means sticking to a far too constrictive, narrow and limited concept; but on the other hand, embracing evolution means losing the same. Either way, synthwave seems to be a genre of diminishing returns as it goes on. It’s harder and harder to feel excited about projects dealing in the same visual and musical tropes, but any time anyone tries to do something new, they lose the quintessence of synthwave.

I suppose one viewpoint here is that perhaps synthwave was never meant to be a genre, scene or musical movement. Perhaps there is good reason why Kavinsky turned on his creation, so to speak, and has spoken dismissingly of the synthwave scene. Compared to essentially any genre that has flourished throughout the decades, synthwave was based on a far narrower concept, and breaking out from its constraints has proven a conundrum. In many ways, the whole idea of a scene and genre based on a narrow slice of faux 80’s nostalgia is odd; as a niché, it gets exceedingly constrictive.

Synthwave was one of the early genres fomented through the internet, growing and spreading rapidly and globally. It never had time to evolve into local, wildly differing scenes as happened with black metal, death metal, punk and so on; these local genres would later result in continuous intermixing of approaches, which would provide an almost endless source for mutations. As soon as synthwave started to gain traction, its basic form was cemented and adopted globally. There’s no real loop from any grassroots level local branchings to the global community.

Perhaps synthwave is something a moment-in-time phenomenon that just never faded out, but neither managed to get out of that moment.

I’m not going to say that synthwave has fallen, or that it’s dead, or, even worse, that oh how the scene today sucks. What I’m saying is that synthwave is stuck in an artistic and creative rut; it’s become stagnant. Synthwave has lost much of its momentum without ever really becoming more than a weird popular cultural footnote, and it seems to have become mired in a swamp of artists all too happily copying each other both musically and visually. A surefire sign of this is the amount of trite, soulless AI covers popping up on various releases being promoted on Facebook’s various synthwave groups.

(Jeez, am I after all saying the scene today sucks?)

Quite frankly, evolution is necessary. No genre, synthwave included, can stick to just doing the same old, same old. Along with keeping in mind the roots, horizons need to broaden, new things have to be tried out and new perspectives must be explored. The tragedy of synthwave is that thus far, few have bothered to try, and those who have not managed to bring much meaningful new to the genre. But that doesn’t mean it’s not necessary. There are only so many thousand albums you can cut from the same bouncy bass lines, shimmering synth pads and neon leads. Metal never stopped evolving, which is key to its longevity; people may not like all directions it has taken, but had metal not kept evolving, it would never have had as many resurgences as it’s had.

So where can synthwave evolve?

Honestly, beats me. But I sure hope that people keep on trying new things. Eventually somebody’s bound to get it right.

Until someone figures that out, synthwave’s going to continue being a genre of diminishing returns for both artists and fans.