Vince Clarke

Through his groundbreaking work with Depeche Mode, Yazoo, and finally Erasure, the mercurial Vince Clarke was among the driving forces behind the rise of synth pop and remains a major player in the style's continued vitality. His work was an enormous influence on the emergence of electronica, and as Erasure's love-struck, highly melodic dance-pop has remained a force on the U.K. charts decades after their emergence in the mid-'80s, Clarke has continued to explore sound and technology. Highlights among these efforts include 2001's Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle, a nature-suffused electro-acoustic collaboration with Martyn Ware, and 2023's Songs of Silence, an ambient-leaning set of genre-blurring (mostly) instrumentals that served as his first official solo album.