Synth-pop's confessional core
Lorde's What Was That taps into a long tradition of heartbreak wired through machines. photo: file
Lorde's comeback track What Was That hits like a jolt of electric blue after nearly four years of silence - a shimmering synth-pop burst that takes the heartbreak baton from Melodrama and sprints with it straight onto a twilight dance floor. Created in collaboration with Jim-E Stack and Daniel Nigro, its throbbing synth layers and snappy percussion mark a decisive pivot from the hazy folk-pop of Solar Power toward something edgier, more immediate.
Before the track dropped, Lorde teased it with a surprise appearance in Washington Square Park, a DIY pop-up briefly halted by the NYPD for lack of permits, only to reemerge later that day as a small-scale rave beneath the iconic arch. Critics have latched onto how Lorde compresses vulnerability and release into every shimmering beat, blending memory, indulgence, and confessional honesty into a taut, three-and-a-half-minute charge of emotional electricity.
As listeners reacquaint themselves with the moody glow of her late-night anthems, here are six pivotal synth-pop confessionals that echo the emotional voltage now coursing through Lorde's latest work. With their celestial nostalgia, these tracks show how electronic pop has always been a vehicle for truth-telling in disguise. Put them on, turn up the volume, and step into a world where every beat feels like it was made for your midnight musings.
'Dancing on My Own' – Robyn
Robyn's 2010 landmark track is the quintessential "crying on the dance floor" anthem; a glittering heartbreak grenade cloaked in four-on-the-floor ferocity. The radio version, a straight-up synth-pop gem, fuses punchy beats and wistful synths with lyrics that might've fallen from Lorde's pen: "I'm in the corner, watching you kiss her."
Its placement at No 20 in Rolling Stone's 2021 "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" cemented its cultural heft as the gold standard of lonely anthems. Every breath Robyn leaves between lines dares the listener to fill it with their own achea kind of bare-souled intimacy Lorde now reclaims in her own electronic evolution.
'Blue Monday' – New Order
Blurring the lines between post-punk edge and club-ready pulse, Blue Monday is the biggest-selling 12-inch single of all time for a reason. With its icy drum programming and cascading synth bass, the 1983 track pulses like a heart slowly breaking. Bernard Sumner's flat-toned vocals bleed quiet desperation, weaving an emotional narrative into the robotic structure of the song.
It's the archetype of synth-pop soul-baring, emotion delivered with surgical precision, paving the way for artists like Lorde who seek connection through the cool veneer of electronic sound.
'Enjoy the Silence' – Depeche Mode
"Words are very unnecessary," croons Martin Gore, floating above a lush synthscape of clipped melodies and enveloping pads. This moody, minimalist classic peaked at No 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and snagged a BRIT Award for Best British Single in 1990, all while channeling a deep weariness with language itself.
Its mix of rhythmic energy and lyrical restraint offers a template for emotional understatement, something Lorde taps into when she uses silence and space as instruments in their own right, allowing every pause to echo like a broken chord.
'Heartbeats' – The Knife
From the Swedish sibling duo who brought us Silent Shout, Heartbeats is a haunting glitch-pop lullaby. Karin Dreijer's voice trembles through warped synths and jittery percussion, delivering surreal, fragmented lines like "One, two, three, four, lucky..." that feel both cryptic and intimate.
Ranked No 15 on Pitchfork's "Top 500 Songs of the 2000s," the 2002 track captures devotion as something disjointed yet sincere. The Knife's commitment to emotional discomfort and eerie tenderness mirrors Lorde's own journey into synth-driven confessions that don't shy away from complexity.
'Midnight City' – M83
With its iconic synth hook and that euphoric, saxophone-drenched climax, Midnight City encapsulates the feeling of chasing something intangible under neon lights. Straddling synth-pop, dream-pop, and new wave, the track remains a flex in sonic yearning.
Released in 2011, it's an anthem of escape and fantasy, a widescreen take on longing that turns private ache into public catharsis - exactly the kind of scale Lorde now seems to be embracing as she charts a more expansive emotional territory.
'Computer Love' – Kraftwerk
Long before Wi-Fi romances and DMs at dawn, Kraftwerk tapped into the loneliness of digital connection with their 1981 song Computer Love, a delicate, robotic ballad about yearning through a screen. Built on pristine synth lines and a metronomic rhythm, the track's emotion is delivered not through vocal inflection but through eerie restraint. "I call this number / For a data date" sounds sterile on paper, but paired with the track's melancholic melody, it becomes quietly devastating.
Kraftwerk's influence on synth-pop is seismic, but Computer Love also reveals the genre's early potential for emotional depth. Unlike Lorde's warm-blooded introspection, Kraftwerk's confessions are filtered through machines - disembodied, precise, and haunting. Yet that distance is the emotion: a yearning made sharper by its clinical delivery, an ache encoded in binary.
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