Excited to be included in the forthcoming book Just Can't Get Enough - Synth Pop and Its Legacies edited by Geoff Stahl, Nabeel Zuberi & Holly Kruse. The title of the chapter is:
Atomic: Synth Pop and the Aesthetics of Nuclear Armageddon
"There is nothing so distant as the recent past, especially when narrative accounts of that history are suppressed as official secrets. The cult status of the Sundance/RTL television series Deutschland 83 has revealed to audiences just how close we came to nuclear conflict in the early 1980s and the escalation of geopolitical tensions in the final years of the Cold War. However, revisiting the mainstream hits of the era, it would seem that the soundtrack was already written. Amongst a raft of synth-pop anthems anticipating nuclear Armageddon, Peter Schilling’s Bowie-inspired ‘Major Tom’ sets the mood perfectly. Originally a 1983 number one in West Germany, it is now enjoying a second life as the show’s title theme. Missing out on the UK Top 40 at the time, remarkably, the single peaked at 14 on the US Hot 100 and topped the chart in Canada. With its signature “4,3,2,1” countdown, the song captures the anxiety of the latter half of the Cold War, specifically the NATO operation Able Archer, an exercise simulating DefCon 1, and the preparations for a nuclear attack. The drill was so convincing that, according to papers from 1990, declassified in 2015, the USSR was on the verge of launching a pre-emptive strike. Oblivious though much of the general population was to this brush with nuclear destruction, the music of the synth-pop era seemed to capture that sublime terror.
This research will investigate the atomic aesthetic of the synth-pop era, in an exploration of the music, lyrics and music videos of mainstream hits from the period 1979 to 1985. It will argue the taut metallic sounds of early Eighties pop were a barometer of the political tensions that characterised the end of the Cold War. Through detailed textual analysis, I will suggest that this resonance is emphasised in the use of both synthesisers and drum machines. It will be suggested that the modern, minimal soundscape contrasted with the decorated sounds of the charts before punk. However, unlike the hard-edged melodies of the new wave, the contemporary aesthetic of synth-pop ironically concealed some very traditional songwriting, often echoing the doo-wop’s era melodic richness and familiar chord progressions. To this end, I will suggest that when lyrical themes touched upon the emotional fallout of the impending apocalypse, the collision of nostalgia and nihilism created a heady cocktail that has continued to thrill. With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991 bringing an end to a divided Europe, this line of creative tension also dispersed in pop. As the Nineties proceeded, the popular imagination moved on to anticipate the impending Millennium as the next source of cataclysmic disaster. The century’s final decade was bathed in a warm glow of remembrance and sentimentality: a stark contrast to the terror of nuclear fission that supplied early 1980s pop culture with its sophisticated vernacular of haunting futurism.
Tracks included: The Clash’s ‘London’s Calling’; Peter Gabriel’s ‘Games Without Frontiers’; Blondie’s ‘Atomic’; Kate Bush’s ‘Breathing’; OMD’s ‘Enola Gay’; Peter Schilling’s ‘Major Tom’; Nena – ’99 Luftballons’; Ultravox’s ‘Dancing with Tears in My Eyes’; Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Two Tribes’; and Tears For Fears ‘Everybody Want To Rule The World’.
The chapter will build upon an article published in Far Out Magazine in 2021.
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