https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kccqoiTiuw8&t=129s Adding here to extended TLA remix for reference (because it's the superior version anyways :D)
A bit of background on me, I'm a musician, music producer and an absolute 80s freak, I got into synths purely because I wanted to recreate my favorite sounds from my favorite 80s hits and write my own music using them.
One of my on repeat songs lately is Steve Winwood's Higher Love. I really wanna find out how all these sounds were achieved but never found any info about the synths used on the song.
I do have some assumptions and I wanna see if they're correct.
Bass... love how it's layered, could be anything though.
Verse keys sound very FM (my guess some kind of a DX7 marimba preset?).
Pre chorus choir pad and chorus brass sound very digital for it being from 1986, before the D50 came out (My guess for the pad is Fairlight CMI maybe? Brass sounds too hi fi to be the Fairlight).
Chorus synths sound very analog, could be lots of different things.
The only concrete info I do have is that JR's drums are blended with a DMX, but I'd love to know how they made it sound like that :)
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Steve Winwood was known to have loved his Multimoog and DX7. I don't know if those were exactly what he used in this particular case, but the sounds certainly fit.
I hear some FM growl in the bass, but it doesn't sound like a preset. Might be the same bass patch that was used by Tears for Fears on "Shout" during the bridge. (Apparently they used Steve's Hammond on the same track, so there's some connection there.)