24. Yazoo - Don't Go (Mute)

Eight weeks at number one from 24th July 1982

When we bumped into Yazoo’s last single “Only You”, there was a sense the new duo were just settling into their working relationship. For whatever its strengths and commerciality, “Only You” was a track Vince Clarke had lying around before Yazoo came into being, and had initially considered hawking around to other groups. At the point of writing it, his working relationship with Alison Moyet hadn’t really been instigated, so what the public were left to buy was Moyet interpreting a track which at one point could just as easily have been handed to Depeche Mode.

“Don’t Go” is the first example of a Yazoo single where the fork in the road, the divergence between Mode and Clarke, is obvious. If Clarke’s earliest work with Depeche Mode fizzes and bops, “Don’t Go” bops and slams. The drum machine is approximating an R&B/gospel rhythm, the central synth riff – in all other respects close enough to something Clarke might have tried circa “Just Can’t Get Enough” – has more dancefloor friendly shades to it, not least the aspects where the familar high-end squeakiness is replaced by digital bubbling or low, bassy grumbles.

It’s actually less ambitious melodically than a lot of Depeche Mode’s earliest work. “New Life” was busy and surprisingly ambitious, always introducing new twists, while “Don’t Go” finds its groove by the twentieth second and sticks rigidily to it, only offering slight variations.

Unlike “New Life”, though, Clarke has a singer who can be ambitious on his behalf. While Dave Gahan is a strong vocalist, his performances from 1981 right through to the present day have tended to stick doggedly to a mournful mid-range. You could argue that it forced Depeche Mode to become more dramatic, more symphonic around him; his vocals have generally acted as the central anchor, requiring the splashes of colour to occur elsewhere in the songs. Moyet, on the other hand, veers from threatening low growls here right up to desperate shrieks. She supplies the dramatic flourishes while Clarke is free, for the first time, to let the central hooks hit a steady dancefloor friendly groove without worrying too much about frilly embellishments.

With it, the pair also managed to take early eighties synth pop to slightly different places from their peers. If you were being charitable, you could argue that it was fresh and new, and that it signalled that Clarke knew synths were about more than just aloofness and futurism, but in truth they weren’t the first to realise this. Giorgio Moroder picked up the new technology and discovered that it could represent sex, desire, vulnerability and danceability in the previous decade. All Clarke and Moyet were really doing was picking up the baton and understanding that they didn’t need permission to take electronics into these areas. Their approach here, a kind of gospel tinged New Romanticism, did however slowly nose away at the boundaries of what was possible, impressing critics without frightening either the school disco dancefloor or Clarke’s earliest fans.

“Don’t Go” is one of those rare examples of two stylistically very different individuals realising the qualities they have in tandem, and working them through with maximum effectiveness. It peaked at number 3 in the national charts.

23. Anti-Nowhere League - Woman (WXYZ)

Two weeks at number one from 10th July 1982

In January 1981, during the long period of mourning that followed John Lennon’s assassination, Geffen scored another number one single from his “Double Fantasy” album. Beginning with the murmured lines “For the other half of the sky”, “Woman” wasn’t just a pean to Yoko Ono – although he clearly had her in mind – but women in general; the sacrifices they make, the nonsense they potentially tolerate.

For all its good intentions, “Woman” periodically bordered on the sickly and mawkish. My mother put forward her verdict plainly and simply: “It’s a good single, but God he had a nerve to criticise Paul McCartney for being sentimental”. She allowed him a pass, though, and in common with millions of others bought the “Double Fantasy” album, absorbing it while still shaken about the man’s death, then admitting its flaws and filing it away as a souvenir from a strange emotional period; the “Candle In The Wind” of the eighties, if you will.

I have no idea if, a year-and-a-half later, Anti Nowhere League’s “Woman” was partially inspired by the identically titled Lennon single or not, but it’s certainly an interesting coincidence. If Lennon’s single is part appreciation, part apology, The League take the opposite tack and focus on the delusion of romantic love and the dark avenues it can take couples down – although when I say “couples”, I should perhaps refer only to the men in the relationship; if John Lennon’s “Woman” is about women, then Anti-Nowhere League’s “Woman” is actually about the frustrations of men, and in many ways that’s probably the cleverest thing about it (it really doesn't get more sophisticated than this, trust me).

The song begins as a ham-fisted rock ballad, filled to the brim with cliches. “You came to me in a dream, I'm sure/ You gave your love, you gave much more to me/ Woman, will you marry me?” Animal sings after a series of other deliberately soapy cliches, before the group begin to rattle and roll to the repeating, gnashed line “Til death us do part”. From that point forward, the song finds its punk feet, kicking and screaming disappointed abuse such as “Yeah, you're sitting on your arse in your dirty clothes/ You're looking a mess, you're picking your nose” and “Your tits are big but your brains are small/ Sometimes I wonder you got any brains at all”.

It’s the classic set-up for the old school working man’s club gag in song form, “Take my wife, for example… no, really, please take her” extended from a few seconds to three minutes. I wasn’t particularly familiar with “Woman” until I needed to listen to it for the purposes of this blog, and first time out, I understood very well that the fluffy, silky first minute was purely a set-up for an inevitable descent into scattershot abuse; anything else at this stage of the group’s career wouldn’t have made any sense. You can’t travel from “I Hate People” to “I Love My Wife” within the space of a few months, even if doing that would arguably have been a stranger and therefore more radical move.

Feminists would doubtless want to point out the failings in the song and its expectations of relationships, arguing that by idealising romantic partners and putting them on pedestals we set ourselves up for disappointment, and you can't punish someone for failing to live up to the image you projected on to them. By doing do, they would thereby risking falling short of Melody Maker critic Carol Clerk’s Law of The League: “Take them seriously and the joke’s on you”. The group would probably also be thrilled by the outrage.

As a result, arguably the only question worth asking is whether the gag’s execution works or not, and it has to be said, it lacks any real sleight of hand – it nudges, winks and nods so heavily at the listener during the first minute that only an idiot would be surprised by what follows, and it eventually feels more like a bunch of rugby players screeching through some unresolved frustrations in the sports club bar. A lot of the lyrics are also surprisingly conservative, even in jest; criticising the state of a woman’s personal laundry feels more like the subject of a Fabreze advert than a second-wave punk band’s third single. Getting angry about the tidiness of your partner's clothes also has more in common with Gary Numan than Jello Biafra (there's a potentially libellous rumour about Numan and a groupie I won't repeat here. Do your own research, as they say). 

22. New Order - Temptation (Factory)

Six weeks at number one from 29th May 1982

Nearly twenty years ago now, I subscribed to Last.fm, an application which measures the music you stream or listen to on devices, and produces facts and stats about your habits. It aims to stun and surprise you by revealing who your favourite artists are and who else you might enjoy, but can display the bottish habit of shooting bogies such as “If you enjoy listening to Paul McCartney, you may also like the work of John Lennon”.

Once every so often, though, it pulls up an unexpected theme you hadn’t noticed before; that could be that you have an overwhelming proclivity to listen to Joni Mitchell during Springtime, or that your nineteenth most listened to song of all time is an easy listening cover by an artist you otherwise don’t care about, or – in my case - that New Order are among your top twenty most listened to artists (currently resting at the number 12 spot).

The stats don’t lie. Year in, year out I dip into New Order’s catalogue and devour some of their tracks almost obsessively, but I do all this without feeling as if I can call myself “a fan”. Looking at the rest of my personal chart, I can see a stream of artists who at some point of my life I have felt a strong and possibly ill-advised connection to, particularly in my teens and twenties. They’ve all produced music I’ve loved, but have probably also had a combination of other factors which captured my imagination - strong lyrical themes, wit, intelligence or irony, a gripping visual aesthetic which stirred my excitement for their music, or a sense of something I could relate to or a version of somebody I wanted to be.

I don’t recall ever feeling this way about New Order. New Order have always just been there, pumping out wonderful records which have been, at different moments and sometimes all at the same time, moody, stylish, irresistibly danceable, boundary pushing and exquisite pop. Despite all this, though (and I accept there’s a chance I’m projecting here) who among us has really felt as if they know Bernard Sumner or Peter Hook, or even The Other Two? As teenagers, did we really read one of their interviews and want to follow them around the country until we more clearly understood the workings of their minds? Did their lyrics – in one or two cases, among the most atrocious ever written – make us think “Finally somebody has put a new spin on some of the events in my life”?

New Order never gave much away, but they also never gave the impression there was much going on behind the mystique either. All the beauty took place around them; those tastefully designed Factory Records sleeves and arthouse music videos created an image of sorts, but not one that stuck to a solid theme or was consistently, identifiably their own – if you asked Bernard Sumner to talk in depth about the meaning behind any of the artistic elements that accompanied them, you might get seven or eight words at best. If you really wanted the lowdown on that stuff, you had to ring the entryphone at Factory Records and philosophise with Tony Wilson.

“Temptation”, then, is fascinating for two reasons; firstly, it acts as the first solid, logical bridge between their old analogue past and their new experiments with electronics. If “Everything’s Gone Green” sounded shaky and tentative, “Temptation” seems more sure footed, in tune with the machinery rather than occasionally falling out-of-step with it. The original 1982 version (and not the 1987 remix which the group seem determined to make us believe is the definitive version) is too spindly for the dancefloor, but still sounds forward-thinking, like an early experiment in indie-dance.

Combined with that, though, is something that feels sharper and more honest, more knowable and believable, less arid than most of New Order’s work; Sumner’s voice strains and struggles, but the simplicity of the lyrics about the collapse of a relationship are close enough to Motown (The Temptations, even). “Up, down, turn around/ Please don't let me hit the ground/ Tonight I think I'll walk alone/ I'll find my soul as I go home” could actually be lines from a Northern Soul record, while the repeated begging of “Oh, it’s the last time/ I’ve never met anyone quite like you before” brings everything to the necessary climax.

21. Yazoo - Only You (Mute)

One week at number one on 22nd May 1982

In the eyes of the music critics, Vince Clarke was always going to be the winner for leaving Depeche Mode. It probably wasn’t intended as a cynical political move, but it worked in his favour – as a brand (rather than a band) they were cute, young, teeny and unashamedly pop, and arguably disposable too. Their name even translated (arguably) as "Hurried Fashion", as if to accidentally hint at a certain lack of long term plan.

By departing with some vague excuses about not enjoying the trappings of being in a group, his stance could be read as personal, disapproving of their style or direction, or artistic depending on what you wanted to believe. It was certainly an admirably bold step; few band members have quit right after their first major hit single and gone on to further success.

While hindsight proves that his move wasn’t a dumb one, it would be wrong to assume he always felt secure about his decision. Shortly after leaving and before more concrete arrangements had been made, he wondered whether he could make a living as a songwriter, and he initially offered “Only You” to the band he had just left. There’s a beautiful alternate timeline opening up here which allows us to go wild imagining what Depeche Mode would have made of this song (I’m slightly surprised somebody hasn’t tried to do this with AI technology already). I’m straining and failing to hear it; there’s something about “Only You” which doesn’t sound like it should be sung by Dave Gahan, and the arrangement is also gentle and simplistic rather than featuring the broad atmospheric sweeps the band would quickly utilise. 

The group turned Clarke down, perhaps inevitably feeling that buying second-hand songs off the band member who had just walked away would not be an act of confidence and could potentially seal their fate. Had they accepted, it would also have deprived Clarke of his first major hit as a non-member of the band; sometimes it’s for the best that paths remain unexplored.

What he did instead was quickly hook up creatively with a local woman, the ex-Screamin’ Ab Dabs member Alison Moyet. Moyet was from a very different school of thought to Clarke and his ex-Depeche friends, having a background in punk and R&B groups and a powerful, expressive voice which couldn’t have been less akin to the sulky mid-range Gahan inhabited. There was a wildness and directness to her approach which opened up all manner of fresh possibilities for Clarke as a songwriter, not least the chance to act against the critical cliché that all synth groups were in some way “cold and emotionally detached”.

In this respect, “Only You” is a slightly strange opening effort in that it doesn’t make the most of her abilities. There’s a daintiness to it that doesn’t give her much to play with – from the intro onwards, the precise, pinging, staccato synth lines remind me of an electronic version of the sounds seeping from a wind-up musical box. It’s pretty and memorable but lyrically and melodically simplistic. The intro provides a solid foundation and the track never moves very far away, stuck in its own delicate and very unspecific mourning for a failed love affair (rather like “See You”, this is romance presented as a series of sketchy outline Mills and Boon details, filled with touched hands behind closed doors and women sulkily looking out of windows).

It was a huge number two hit, which makes its later fate seem inexplicable. It’s possible I’m listening to the wrong radio stations or hanging around the wrong shopping centres, but its status seems to have slipped over the years and I can’t remember the last time I heard it. Listening to it again for the first time in forever, I’m struck by how much of a passing novelty it may have seemed in 1982; Moyet may not be given many chances to stretch herself, but her voice is a lot more naturally expressive and technically proficient than many of her straining New Romantic rivals. She manages to bring warmth to some slightly flimsy lyrics and a sense of genuine emotional investment – Phil Oakey, Dave Gahan, and even Marc Almond at this point couldn’t have sold the song as well. In tandem with her, the gentle jewellery box synth backing adds a sentimental touch which can either seem irksome or moving depending on your emotional state when you press play.