Music
8 classic songs made iconic with Moog synths
Bob Moog’s influence on music is incalculable. These tracks wouldn’t exist without him.
The Moog is a true design classic. The brainchild of Bob Moog, a native New Yorker who turned his engineering and physics knowledge towards the making of a brand new electronic instrument, the Moog synthesizer launched in the mid '60s and quickly became a must-have instrument for any act hoping to invest their music with a futuristic, forward feel.
It's testament to Moog's vision that his instruments have stood the test of time, becoming a key component of music from synthpop to progressive rock, industrial music to disco. Here are eight landmarks in popular music that wouldn’t sound how they sound without a bit of Moog technology.
1. Gary Numan – Are ‘Friends’ Electric?
Gary Numan was a punk rocker when he went into the studio to record Tubeway Army's self-titled debut album. But in the corner of the studio he found a Minimoog and was an immediate convert. It was Numan’s second album, 1979’s Replicas, on which his bold new synth vision really came into focus.
2. Kraftwerk – Autobahn
Of course the German robot-pop pioneers would be fans of Moog’s invention! The Minimoog is the engine for this leisurely 23-minute pootle along the highways of their homeland – a gentle glimpse of the future and a worldwide hit.
3. New Order – Blue Monday
The Manchester-based miserablists took a turn into ecstatic disco-pop with this 1983 banger. The bass line was made using a Moog Source and a homemade Powertran sequencer that Bernard Sumner had built himself.
4. Nine Inch Nails – Head Like a Hole
Trent Reznor has used Moog synths since recording the demos for 1989's Pretty Hate Machine and once claimed that the brand is "part of the vocabulary of how I arrange music." When Moog decided to bring back the Minimoog Model D after a 30-year gap, Reznor was one of the first to get his hands on the new synth.
Listen to Sound Obsession's Synth Wave Special 1982-84 on Red Bull Radio in the player below.
5. Donna Summer – I Feel Love
Italian disco giant Giorgio Moroder was a great advocate for the Moog, and the instrument is right at the centre of this fully synthesised 1977 disco smash, which he produced and co-wrote. At the time, Brian Eno said it was "The sound of the future" – and of course, he was right.
6. Parliament – Flashlight
Bernie Worrell, Parliament/Funkadelic’s master of the keys, first heard the Moog in the hands of the late prog king Keith Emerson. Then he made it a core part of Funkadelic’s sound. The bassline to Flashlight was reportedly played on three or four connected Minimoog synthesizers.
7. Portishead – SOS
The English experimental rock group’s 1994 classic album Dummy was mostly made with a Roland synth, but Adrian Utley got himself a Minimoog for their second LP, advocating the instrument’s "enormous" sound. Hear it on their spellbinding cover of ABBA’s SOS above.
8. CHVRCHES – Wonderland
A new generation of synth-pop bands are deleting their soft synths and re-embracing the joys of hardware. The Moog Sound Lab in Ashville, Carolina has hosted many of these groups for distinctive live sessions – watch Glasgow's CHVRCHES reinvent their track Wonderland using some of Moog's very own top-of-the-range kit.
Watch The Ripple Effect explore the amazing inventions of Bob Moog in the video below.
26 min
The Ripple Effect: Moog
Inventor Bob Moog took the worlds of science and music and synthesised a seismic shift in the sonic landscape.