Three weeks at number one from 8th August 1987
In the eighties, New Order never really seemed like the kind of group to embrace the idea of a "Greatest Hits" album. Snapping all their 45rpm moments into one neat, consumer-friendly brochure for casual shoppers seemed a strange idea for a group (and record label) who were against the idea of even advertising their new releases. Nonetheless, 1987 saw the arrival of "Substance", one of the best "Best Ofs" the entire decade had to offer; beautifully packaged (especially the cassette) and near-perfect in its contents.
It also resulted in New Order being given a tight, pressing deadline by their label boss Tony Wilson – to record two new tracks in London with producer Stephen Hague, one of which would be used on the compilation. Studio time was booked for ten days with Hague, a producer the band hadn’t worked with before, but whose reputation had begun to spike due to his recent work with the Pet Shop Boys. Perhaps somewhat foolishly, the band entered the studio with just a handful of ideas.
While Tony Wilson made several nervous phone calls to check things were progressing well, the band toyed and tinkered away and began to forge the basis of two songs which would become “True Faith” and “1963”. Problematically though, Bernard Sumner hadn’t written lyrics for either, and Hague began to grow impatient, stating that he found it extremely hard to understand what direction the song should be taking without a clear lyrical map to follow. Sumner ummed and ahhed, then welched on his promise to come up with something to an agreed deadline, until one day he was “accidentally” locked inside the West London flat the band were renting and left without food for an entire day (history does not record who was responsible for this, or indeed whether it was deliberate).
Left without anything to do apart from stew in his own hunger and misfortune, Sumner turned out possibly the finest set of lyrics of his career for one of the tracks (and some of the most baffling ones ever for the B-side). “True Faith” is overwhelmingly about drug addiction, though the band ultimately backtracked on the original draft for one of the verses, the much more explicit “When I was a very small boy/ very small boys talked to me/ now that we’ve grown up together/ they’re all taking drugs with me”. Doing so, and changing the final line to “They’re afraid of what they see”, has probably given the song an ambiguity and mystique it may otherwise not have had, besides ensuring larger amounts of radio airplay.
The end result is a track which sounds both euphoric and troubled, fresh and exotic and yet disintegrating. It skips and bounces, and has a chorus which could almost be heard as celebratory, but never once sounds truly triumphant, and always feels giddy and unstable. The chimes fall and despond, those bizarre panpipe sounds, which seem as if they would ordinarily belong on a New Age gift shop CD, hum in the background like the soundtrack to a yogic daze, and Sumner delivers lines which are appropriately contradictory – the reserved joy of “A certain sense of liberty” sits alongside the despair of “I don’t care if I’m here tomorrow”, while the line “I used to think that the day would never come” could sit in either camp. Are you delighted that you’re finally here, bathed in sunlight, watching yourself from the outside, or horrified? Or both?
Sumner utterly nails it with the simple line “the childhood I lost replaced by fear” too; making the way addicts self-medicate their way out of their own prisons a central focal point of the song. The song is not glorifying the use of heroin, or indeed any other drug, but instead trying to understand why it became such a huge issue in the mid-eighties. In doing so, it’s more empathetic than any number of grainy, gritty Government adverts where a narrator whispered, in a voice somewhere between Gary Lineker and David Attenborough, that if you took it, you’d start to look “tired… and spotty” (we all looked a bit tired and spotty in those days, whether we were on or off The Horse). Musically and lyrically, it’s a hazy, faded, pastel shaded sketch of a situation which is portrayed as a frustrated, fragile and finite kind of luke-warm happiness, one where the sharp hooks of reality are capable of penetrating the bliss. Even if New Order hadn’t changed the original lyrics, it’s hard to hear how anybody would have thought the song was written in an approving way.
French choreographer Philippe Decouflé was given the task of producing the promo video, and came up with one of the most memorable efforts of all time. Whether he knew what the song was referring to or not (and after countless studies of the contents, I’d say probably not) every drumbeat and every bit of forward propulsion, every jitter and instrumental interlude, is accounted for in some way by the ensemble of gaffer-taped or primary coloured padded men, slapping, striding, jumping or just pondering an array of shapes in a television-induced trance. It’s hugely successful purely because it’s one of the few pieces of pop choreography I’ve seen which seamlessly marries movement and music, and interprets bright sounds and conflicting tensions in oblique ways.
Heavily devoting a promo video to choreography risked leaning into seventies Top of the Pops territory, as REM discovered when they were delivered the promo for “Stand”* - but the video for “True Faith” doesn’t just seem strangely appropriate despite seemingly not having a damn thing to do with the song, it also adds a sense of comedy and unease. It was the first serious piece of pop culture in Decouflé’s career, who eventually choreographed the opening ceremony for the 1992 Winter Olympics.
New Order, too, found doors opening in front of them, but others closed behind. “True Faith” is notable for being the first single of theirs where any pretence at Rock music is abandoned. Peter Hook’s bass lines are present, but sunk deep into the mix (much to his aggravation and grief). It’s not pure pop, and it’s not the Pet Shop Boys, despite one wag of a Record Mirror critic dubbing it “It’s A True Faith Sin”, but it’s certainly not the New Order of old whose singles tended to throw grit, friction and imperfection into the mix. Increasingly, and for better and worse, they would become a slightly buckled pop group, rather than a post-punk group with pop and dancefloor influences.
This is also the point a lot of New Order fans check out and go home. For reasons we don’t have to go into right now, I’d say that’s an appalling mistake. Their evolution might not have been to everyone’s taste, but “True Faith” is one of their finest singles, and there are also amazing moments ahead. Once they fully and unapologetically engrossed themselves in the possibilities of dance music, there was a period where they truly flew; but of course, as with “True Faith”, the conflicts remained. Either in real life, or in their music, it always felt as if the group could never be simply happy, and the constant grit and the friction of unsanded, unvarnished wood always made itself felt in their work.
* (An aside – it’s not as if choreographers on Top of the Pops didn’t occasionally try to be different, as the performance for Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” proves. It’s just… well… I mean compare that to the video for “True Faith” if you want, but it feels like comparing a rag-rolled wall to a Jackson Pollock painting).
Week One
23. A.R.Kane - Lollita (4AD)
Peak position: 3
It’s fascinating how much the 21st Century shoegaze revival has seen praise poured upon all manner of unlikely (and frequently not very good) nineties acts. This is especially true when you consider the fact that A.R Kane were releasing singles like this as early as 1987, setting the style, tone and even production values for everyone else to follow. Hell, “Lollita” was even out there before My Bloody Valentine changed out of their fingerpaint-stained indiepop nursery wear and decided to grow fangs.
Is it any good? Well, at the time it sounded like nothing else, except perhaps a particularly brittle, harder-edged Cocteau Twins. The passing of time has obviously discoloured its uniqueness, but if it sounds slightly like a Slowdive demo now, it’s worth remembering that group were just kids who hadn’t been near a recording studio by this point.
While Tony Wilson made several nervous phone calls to check things were progressing well, the band toyed and tinkered away and began to forge the basis of two songs which would become “True Faith” and “1963”. Problematically though, Bernard Sumner hadn’t written lyrics for either, and Hague began to grow impatient, stating that he found it extremely hard to understand what direction the song should be taking without a clear lyrical map to follow. Sumner ummed and ahhed, then welched on his promise to come up with something to an agreed deadline, until one day he was “accidentally” locked inside the West London flat the band were renting and left without food for an entire day (history does not record who was responsible for this, or indeed whether it was deliberate).
Left without anything to do apart from stew in his own hunger and misfortune, Sumner turned out possibly the finest set of lyrics of his career for one of the tracks (and some of the most baffling ones ever for the B-side). “True Faith” is overwhelmingly about drug addiction, though the band ultimately backtracked on the original draft for one of the verses, the much more explicit “When I was a very small boy/ very small boys talked to me/ now that we’ve grown up together/ they’re all taking drugs with me”. Doing so, and changing the final line to “They’re afraid of what they see”, has probably given the song an ambiguity and mystique it may otherwise not have had, besides ensuring larger amounts of radio airplay.
The end result is a track which sounds both euphoric and troubled, fresh and exotic and yet disintegrating. It skips and bounces, and has a chorus which could almost be heard as celebratory, but never once sounds truly triumphant, and always feels giddy and unstable. The chimes fall and despond, those bizarre panpipe sounds, which seem as if they would ordinarily belong on a New Age gift shop CD, hum in the background like the soundtrack to a yogic daze, and Sumner delivers lines which are appropriately contradictory – the reserved joy of “A certain sense of liberty” sits alongside the despair of “I don’t care if I’m here tomorrow”, while the line “I used to think that the day would never come” could sit in either camp. Are you delighted that you’re finally here, bathed in sunlight, watching yourself from the outside, or horrified? Or both?
Sumner utterly nails it with the simple line “the childhood I lost replaced by fear” too; making the way addicts self-medicate their way out of their own prisons a central focal point of the song. The song is not glorifying the use of heroin, or indeed any other drug, but instead trying to understand why it became such a huge issue in the mid-eighties. In doing so, it’s more empathetic than any number of grainy, gritty Government adverts where a narrator whispered, in a voice somewhere between Gary Lineker and David Attenborough, that if you took it, you’d start to look “tired… and spotty” (we all looked a bit tired and spotty in those days, whether we were on or off The Horse). Musically and lyrically, it’s a hazy, faded, pastel shaded sketch of a situation which is portrayed as a frustrated, fragile and finite kind of luke-warm happiness, one where the sharp hooks of reality are capable of penetrating the bliss. Even if New Order hadn’t changed the original lyrics, it’s hard to hear how anybody would have thought the song was written in an approving way.
French choreographer Philippe Decouflé was given the task of producing the promo video, and came up with one of the most memorable efforts of all time. Whether he knew what the song was referring to or not (and after countless studies of the contents, I’d say probably not) every drumbeat and every bit of forward propulsion, every jitter and instrumental interlude, is accounted for in some way by the ensemble of gaffer-taped or primary coloured padded men, slapping, striding, jumping or just pondering an array of shapes in a television-induced trance. It’s hugely successful purely because it’s one of the few pieces of pop choreography I’ve seen which seamlessly marries movement and music, and interprets bright sounds and conflicting tensions in oblique ways.
Heavily devoting a promo video to choreography risked leaning into seventies Top of the Pops territory, as REM discovered when they were delivered the promo for “Stand”* - but the video for “True Faith” doesn’t just seem strangely appropriate despite seemingly not having a damn thing to do with the song, it also adds a sense of comedy and unease. It was the first serious piece of pop culture in Decouflé’s career, who eventually choreographed the opening ceremony for the 1992 Winter Olympics.
New Order, too, found doors opening in front of them, but others closed behind. “True Faith” is notable for being the first single of theirs where any pretence at Rock music is abandoned. Peter Hook’s bass lines are present, but sunk deep into the mix (much to his aggravation and grief). It’s not pure pop, and it’s not the Pet Shop Boys, despite one wag of a Record Mirror critic dubbing it “It’s A True Faith Sin”, but it’s certainly not the New Order of old whose singles tended to throw grit, friction and imperfection into the mix. Increasingly, and for better and worse, they would become a slightly buckled pop group, rather than a post-punk group with pop and dancefloor influences.
This is also the point a lot of New Order fans check out and go home. For reasons we don’t have to go into right now, I’d say that’s an appalling mistake. Their evolution might not have been to everyone’s taste, but “True Faith” is one of their finest singles, and there are also amazing moments ahead. Once they fully and unapologetically engrossed themselves in the possibilities of dance music, there was a period where they truly flew; but of course, as with “True Faith”, the conflicts remained. Either in real life, or in their music, it always felt as if the group could never be simply happy, and the constant grit and the friction of unsanded, unvarnished wood always made itself felt in their work.
* (An aside – it’s not as if choreographers on Top of the Pops didn’t occasionally try to be different, as the performance for Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” proves. It’s just… well… I mean compare that to the video for “True Faith” if you want, but it feels like comparing a rag-rolled wall to a Jackson Pollock painting).
New Entries Elsewhere In The Charts
Week One
23. A.R.Kane - Lollita (4AD)
Peak position: 3
It’s fascinating how much the 21st Century shoegaze revival has seen praise poured upon all manner of unlikely (and frequently not very good) nineties acts. This is especially true when you consider the fact that A.R Kane were releasing singles like this as early as 1987, setting the style, tone and even production values for everyone else to follow. Hell, “Lollita” was even out there before My Bloody Valentine changed out of their fingerpaint-stained indiepop nursery wear and decided to grow fangs.
Is it any good? Well, at the time it sounded like nothing else, except perhaps a particularly brittle, harder-edged Cocteau Twins. The passing of time has obviously discoloured its uniqueness, but if it sounds slightly like a Slowdive demo now, it’s worth remembering that group were just kids who hadn’t been near a recording studio by this point.
28. The Doctors Children - The girl with green eyes (Buffalo)
Peak position: 25
Doctors Children are probably among the most buried of the era’s paisley janglers, and “The Girl With Green Eyes” hints towards a group who could have weathered the forthcoming Madchester storm very well indeed if they’d just hung in there – instead, it was their final single.
Its riddled with melancholy hooks and driving rhythms, sulking vocal harmonies and pretty yet choppy guitars; but in common with AR Kane, there’s a sense of wrong place and wrong time about it. If they’d formed a year or two later, they would probably have been signed by a major label.
Week Two
12. Taffy - Step By Step (Transglobal)
Peak position: 11
Somewhat under-performing follow-up to the chart smash “I Love My Radio”, which is interesting as if anything, it sounds much more in-keeping with the swelling Stock Aitken Waterman zeitgeist than the single which actually delivered the dough. “Step By Step” is buoyant, bouncy and thundering, but possibly spends too much time teasingly sauntering around the chorus rather than regularly going for the bullseye.
28. Crazyhead - Baby Turpentine (Food)
Peak position: 4
"Baby Turpentine" pretty much picks up where "What Gives You The Idea..." left off, making an unholy racket about nothing in particular. The guitars make an old school rock and roll row (dig that descending and rising fifties double bass styled bassline) the vocals scream, and it sounds like full-on garage rock with a slightly hairy eighties twist.
Given that groups making this sort of noise are all over Bandcamp these days, it might feel faintly peculiar to remember that we really did get quite excited about this at the time, revelling in its apparent wildness. Within the context of the comparatively stuffy and enclosed mid-to-late eighties, though, something this untamed, messy and raucous felt like rare treasure.
29. Broken Bones - Trader in Death (RFB)
Peak position: 29
But perhaps we’re in danger of forgetting that things could pack a stronger punch than that. It’s going to take a long time to check, so let me just state with all kinds of “citation needed” messages attached that I think this is the first UK hardcore punk record to enter the indies since the previous year. What was once a playground for British second wave punks had become a fortress whose walls were rarely breached.
Among Broken Bones’ line-up were two ex-members of Discharge (Bones and Tezz) who were responsible for the first ever number one we wrote about on this blog. Their sound became borderline Thrash Metal in places and enabled them to push forwards after their original friends had fallen. “Trader In Death” is a hard, buckled and occasionally squealing instrumental which doesn’t try to soften any of its edges,
Following their 1987 album “Losing Control”, however, they would take a break for a few years.
Week Three
5. The Primitives - Thru The Flowers (Lazy)
Peak position: 2
A re-recording of their earlier single (which also charted). This would effectively serve as the group’s farewell to the indie sector – “Crash” and top ten success were beckoning.
14. Swans - New Mind (Product Inc.)
Peak position: 5
17. London Posse - London Posse (Big Life)
Peak position: 12
Very early release on Jazz Summer’s Big Life label, which would eventually produce enormous hits for Yazz and Coldcut (both together and as separate entities) as well as The Soup Dragons. London Posse were a hip-hop collective who were here produced by Tim Westwood, and this is raw, threatening stuff with absurdly deep basslines, nursery rhymes used as mocking threats against Coke-heads, rambling narratives and a pile-up of ideas on top of a dependable rhythm track (which feels like the only stable element).
It wasn’t remotely commercial enough to be a hit, unlike the label’s later releases, but it’s probably one of the finest examples of early UK Hip-Hop you’ll hear, sounding spontaneous and street level rather than being politely and carefully recorded.
19. Fields Of The Nephilim - Power (Situation Two)
Peak position: 19
20. Tubeway Army – The Peel Sessions (Strange Fruit)
Peak position: 12
Peak position: 19
20. Tubeway Army – The Peel Sessions (Strange Fruit)
Peak position: 12
For the complete charts, please go to the UKMix Forums
Number Ones In The National Charts
Los Lobos: "La Bamba" (London)
Michael Jackson With Siedah Garrett: "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" (Epic)
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