Synth Pop Staurday: Smooth Radio's Top 25 Greatest 1980s Synthpop Songs [2024]

Smooth Radio is a UK broadcast network that plays adult contemporary music, primarily from the Seventies and Eighties. Over the past twelve months, they began playing more upbeat tunes and changed their slogan from Your Relaxing Music Mix to Always The Best Music.

Smooth Radio often features lists of songs or artists on their website which we enjoy reading. Among our favorite recurring lists is the annual listener-voted All-Time Top 500. Every year, songs move up or down, even on or off these tabulations.

There is always a lot of movement on the Top 500 list every year. Except at the very top of the list where the Number One song sits as voted by the listeners. Spoiler alert: "Careless Whisper" has topped the Top 500 list for the past seven years: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

At the end of April 2024, Smooth Radio published their list of The Top 25 Greatest 1980s Synthpop Songs Ever. We cross-checked the songs from the Top 25 with the Top 500 and found the two lists have exactly seven songs in common. We've put an asterisk after the titles of those songs in the following table.

	title	artist	year
25	To Cut A Long Story Short	Spandau Ballet	1981
24	Rio	Duran Duran	1982
23	You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)	Dead Or Alive	1984
22	Enola Gay	Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark	1980
21	Temptation	Heaven 17	1983
20	The Look Of Love*	ABC	1982
19	Kids In America	Kim Wilde	1981
18	Relax	Frankie Goes To Hollywood	1983
17	Don't Go	Yazoo	1982
16	Fade To Grey	Visage	1981
15	The Model	Kraftwerk	1978
14	Cars	Gary Numan	1979
13	Just Can't Get Enough	Depeche Mode	1981
12	Video Killed The Radio Star	The Buggles	1979
11	West End Girls*	Pet Shop Boys	1986
10	A Little Respect	Erasure	1988
09	Take On Me*	a-ha	1985
08	Don't You Want Me*	The Human League	1981
07	Are Friends Electric?	Tubeway Army	1979
06	Blue Monday	New Order	1983
05	I Feel Love	Donna Summer	1977
04	Tainted Love*	Soft Cell	1981
03	Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)*	Eurythmics	1983
02	Vienna	Ultravox	1981
01	Together In Electric Dreams*	Philip Oakey and Giorgio Moroder	1984