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Retrowave

Synthwave is the peak of 80s nostalgia. We dive deeper into the genre's origins and its cultural impact in this special edition.

Photo by Lorenzo Herrera / Unsplash

Nostalgia is essential to Western pop culture. Connected to a sentimental longing and yearning for the return of an idealized and "mythical past," as Svetlana Boym describes in The Future of Nostalgia, nostalgia trickles through every cultural media—from movies, tv-series, fashion, and music.

And the 1980s have been the principal source of reference in the past decades—primarily kicked off by the Miami Vice-inspired video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, published in 2002. A wave of 80s-driven media followed with reboots like Tron: Legacy or Blade Runner 2049 and new outputs such as the movie Drive or the popular Netflix series Stranger Things.

Alongside the cinematic resurrection of the era, a whole stylized universe began to form; a world in blue and pink. And naturally, the world needed a soundtrack. Introducing: Synthwave.

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