Music
7 classic songs made iconic with Moog synths
Bob Moog’s influence on music is incalculable and these iconic tracks wouldn’t exist without him.
All hail the Moog
© Peter Hamblin/Red Bull Content Pool
Since the 1960s, Bob Moog’s revolutionary synthesizers have continued to transform popular music as we know it. Here are seven 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.
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.
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