Music
You Need to Hear This Song #24
Heavy Rotation — All the Way, New Order (Technique, 1989)
Heavy Rotation was a music industry term for songs that one way or another got a lot of airplay. It referred to the large amount of rotation that a particular record got on turntables at radio stations. Since, until the 1980s, this was the only way to get new music into the ears and brains of listeners, heavy rotation meant increased sales. These were good for record companies and artists alike.
Today, some of us still put records on at home and give them a spin. Most of us don’t. However, the term still applies, though in a different way. Streaming services like Spotify sell subscriptions to listeners and then pay artists based on listens. At least, that’s the way we think it works.
For me, heavy rotation means a song that is in my head for some reason. Maybe for a moment, maybe for a day, maybe for longer. It’s a song that you come back to from time to time and still feels just as good.
This series of articles is dedicated to these songs.
Here, I aim to highlight a particular song by a particular band or singer. We should know a bit about the band, a bit about where the song fits into its history and where the song fits into what was happening in music at that time. Then there’s the song itself. Who’s playing on it, what are the lyrics getting at and why is it so good? How does it still occupy sonic space in our lives?
I’ll (try to) keep it short. It shouldn’t take you any longer to read than the song itself. To that end, I’ll put a Youtube clip of the original recording at the top of the article so you can listen as you read. Or not. And because a song is often much different live than in the recording studio, I’ll stick a live clip on at the end.
What song is in your head right now? Here’s one that won’t leave mine today:
#24 — All the Way, New Order (Technique, 1989)
My oldest serving friend recently gifted me tickets to New Order and Pet Shop Boys at the end of September at Madison Square Garden in New York City. He’s the same person who introduced me to New Order in the 1980s. I am eternally grateful for both, me old China Plate.
And speaking of that decade, New Order is a big part of it for me. Not in the heavy viewing, same videos over and over again model of MTV, or more accurately in Canada, Much Music. These stations played the Police, Prince, Duran Duran, ZZ Top, Michael Jackson, and Billy Idol over and over, all day long. You had to stay up a little bit later to see something a little bit less mainstream: Depeche Mode, Echo, and the Bunnymen, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the Cure, the Psychedelic Furs and for me, most of all, New Order.
For the as yet uninitiated, New Order arose out of the ashes of Joy Division after the death of frontman, Ian Curtis. They were part of the first Manchester, post Sex Pistols, wave of bands that also included the Smiths. The next wave, which was arguably bigger — Stone Roses, James, Inspiral Carpets, Happy Mondays, the Charlatans, and the biggest of them all, Oasis — arrived in the 1990s.
But back to New Order. With Bernard Sumner on vocals and guitar, Peter Hook on bass, Stephen Morris on drums, and Gillian Gilbert on keyboards and synthesizers they put out a string of disco-influenced albums that were and continue to be a staple on dancefloors everywhere. These began with “Movement” in 1981 and three more before “Technique,” their fifth in 1989. Just five more have intermittently followed since then.
The songs are instantly recognizable, though difficult to keep track of due to the fact the song’s names are rarely mentioned in the lyrics. “Age of Consent”, “Your Silent Face” and “Ultraviolence” on “Power, Corruption and Lies” (1983), “Love Vigilantes” on “Low-Life” (1985), “Bizarre Love Triangle” on “Brotherhood” (1986) and “True Faith”, “Blue Monday”, “Temptation” and “Celebration” on a compilation album called “Substance” (1987) had cemented their sound and their rabid following by the time we get to the end of the decade.
“Technique” then, is an album for its times. It was 1989, the world was changing fast and the music people in their demographic would as well. Factory Records was an institution and their Hacienda nightclub in Manchester was too. Their music dominated that dance floor, just as the Stone Roses were arriving to change everything.
It’s an album of both disco and pop/rock classics that have an intriguing way of working together. It was not an easy decision deciding which song to focus on here, but in the end, I went with one that sounds the most like New Order. For me, that means a combination of Bernard Sumner’s very human, kind of ordinary voice and Peter Hook’s next-level-that-nobody-else-has-ever-reached absolute command of the bass as an instrument of rhythm and melody, at the same time.
I say again: Peter Hook is the sound of New Order and it could be argued, as he does that without him, it is not New Order anymore, as has been the case since he left the band finally in 2005, the acrimony between he and Bernard too much to bear. He now plays the New Order classics as Peter Hook and the Light, who I had the pleasure of seeing in Buenos Aires in a small, sweaty club in 2014.
Alright, alright already…the song is All the Way and is the second song on the album. Love Less and Run were in serious contention here, but this is my favourite song on the album.
It won’t make sense, in this case, to take apart the lyrics verse by verse. It’s a song about the point at which the songwriter (Sumner) feels comfortable enough with himself and his life to let us know that
“It takes years to find the nerve
To be apart from what you’ve done
To find the truth inside yourself
And not depend on anyone”
Great.
It’s not about what Sumner is saying. It’s about how this music makes you feel. His lyrics have always been kind of throw away and he can’t sing like Ian Curtis could and he had the sense not to write the same kind of lyrics.
This song moves from its first notes, through 3 minutes and twenty seconds of pure pop listening satisfaction. From the start until :38, the guitar is strictly rhythm and it is the Hook bassline that drives the melody, along with the vocal. Things get jangly through the chorus until an exquisite bit of synthesizering from Gilbert at 1:04. More of the same ensues until the same sound leads us out at 2:44.
This is New Order at the height of their powers, in my opinion. They made another; the apparently difficult album called Republic in 1993, and then two more with Hook. “Get Ready” (2001) and “Waiting for the Siren’s Call” (2005), all have their moments. They continued on without him, making two more beyond that. I suppose that’s the version I’ll be seeing in NYC next month.
Beggars can’t be choosers, I’m told.
Here they are, live at the Reading Festival in 1989. If the production qualities of the video don’t make you nostalgic for a different time, nothing will.
If you have made it this far, it will occur to you if this is #24 in this series, then there must be 23 previous ones. This is a correct assumption and here I will link #23. At the bottom of it, you find a link to #22 and the bottom of it, you can — if you so choose — be taken to #21. This ingenious system that I thought up all by myself continues all the way to #1
I really do hope that you like what you have just read. If you want unlimited access to thousands of writers, consider a subscription to Medium. It will set you back $5 a month and if you use this link, then I get a slice of that and I’ll treat myself to a beer at MSG in September.
