I’m getting ready to start my end-of-year coverage next week. So bookmark my site or follow me on Facebook if you’re interested in that.
Before we dive into this incredibly weird year, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the best synthpop music of 2019. Last year was a monumental year for music, and I’m still listening to a lot of the music on these lists.
100 best synthpop songs of 2019
I counted down my 100 favorite songs of 2019, and I’ll be doing so again this year. This was a fairly diverse list that included newcomers like Fragrance and Wingtips as well as veteran acts like Pet Shop Boys and Covenant. At the top of my list was TR/ST’s incredible single, “Gone.” I stand by it!
You can find all 100 songs in this Spotify playlist:
25 best synthpop albums of 2019
TR/ST also topped my best albums of 2019 list with The Destroyer – 1, one of two albums he released last year. The album is just the first half of a two-part shame spiral about self-destruction and featured an incredible run of songs, including “Gone,” “Grouch,” “Bicep,” and “Poorly Coward.” Other albums near the top of my list: A/X by Agent Side Grinder, Exposure Therapy by Wingtips, and Mainstream by Swedish newcomers Unroyal.
You can find my full list here.
Was this the dark scene’s favorite album of 2019?
Nerd alert! Back in January after the end-of-year excitement died down and nearly every website had posted their best-of lists, I wondered if there was any consensus on the best music of the year. So I did this incredibly geeky exercise.
I created a spreadsheet and aggregated all the 2019 lists from a bunch of sources I follow and respect: I Die: You Die, Communion After Dark, The Electricity Club, Synthentral, and many others. I used a weighted point system (AOTY style) to assign points each time an album appeared on someone’s list.
The album with the most points from all the sources I follow in the dark electronic music scene: Agent Side Grinder’s A/X.
