Songoftheday 10/17/15 - I feel so extraordinary something's got a hold on me, I get this feeling i'm in motion a sudden sense of liberty...

"True Faith" - New Order
from the album Substance (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #32 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8

Today's song of the day comes from the British band New Order, the members of which started out as the post-punk act Joy Division. After lead singer/lyricist Ian Curtis sadly ended his life, the act's founder Bernard Summer took over on vocals and with drummer Stephen Morris and bassist Peter Hook, renamed themselves and added keyboardist Gillian Gilbert (Morris' girlfriend). They released a single constructed from lyrics from Curtis, "Ceremony", which became the new incarnation's first top-40 hit in Britain at #34 in 1981 (it also made the American dance chart at #61), and reached the top-10 in New Zealand a couple of years later. The sound was close to the Joy Division, with Summer's deadpan vocals tinted with the despair that Curtis held. They released their first album, Movement, that same year, though none of their early singles appeared on it. The same rang true in Britain for their sophomore effort, Power, Corruption, and Lies, but in the States that changed with the big success of their club track "Blue Monday". With a sound now transformed to be dominated by the synths and bass, predated by their non-album top-30 UK hit "Temptation", their evolution to something different than their past was complete with "Blue Monday". Reaching #5 on Billboard's Dance Club chart and #9 in the UK (as well as top-10 in Germany, Ireland, and New Zealand), the single's combination of emo-style lyrics and frenetic bass and drums captivated new wave fans and clubgoers, and the record remains possibly the most important "dance" song of the first half of the 80s.

New Order again reached the American dance top-5 with "Confusion", which grabbed from the breakdance/freestyle movement (and even crossed over to Billboard's R&B chart at #71), and then again with "The Perfect Kiss", from their third album Low-Life, that harkened back to their earlier days but adding a wall of keyboards. In 1986, they contributed "Shellshock" to the soundtrack to the "Brat Pack" movie Pretty In Pink, and returned to the British top-40 and got a lot of exposure on American college and rock radio stations. This new fanbase in America helped with their next album, Brotherhood, which was a big college radio hit and produced yet another club classic with the #4 single "Bizarre Love Triangle" (years later it would pop onto the Hot 100). By then the changes in the band's direction were apparent, with the relatively sunny outlook of "Bizarre" (despite the lyrics themselves) contrast with the utter brooding of "Blue Monday". Although pop radio hadn't grasped New Order in America as yet, that would finally come to a head as the band looked back.

In 1987 the group released a double-CD retrospective album Substance. With one disc of re-recorded and remixed singles with a second of B-sides and dub/instrumental mixes (the vinyl only had the singles),  the collection was the best point of entry for young music fans to experience the evolution of the band from their punk roots of "Ceremony" to what would be their new single, "True Faith". Written by the band and produced by electropop king Stephen Hague (who helped the Pet Shop Boys and Erasure), and like "Bizarre Love Triangle", American Shep Pettibone remixed the track for the single release. With a avant-garde video conceived by Phillippe Decoufle' and only featuring the band as a peripheral video prop, the piece of art married to the chunk of dance floor heaven...

"True Faith" became New Order's American pop breakthrough, reaching the top 40 on the Hot 100 in December of 1987. The remixed single also climbed to #3 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. Internationally, the song made the top-10 in Australia (#8), Germany (#8), Ireland (#5), New Zealand (#4), and their native Britain (#4). The song also featured prominently in the Michael J. Fox movie Bright Lights, Big City, where it appeared on the soundtrack.

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The B-side of the single, "1963", was an amazing song in its own right, with a homoerotic love story gone wrong...

Here's the extended Pettibone mix that made the top-5 on the Dance chart...

...and on the British TV show The Roxy in 1988..

In 1994, new remixes of the song were released as a single, and "True Faith" returned to the British top-10 at #9...

The following year, "1963" was released as a proper single, with new remixes from Arthur Baker, and with a wonderful video featuring Jane Horrocks of Little Voice and Absolutely Fabulous the track climbed to #21 on the British singles chart and #29 in Ireland in 1995

That house-music inspired version influenced their live act as well, as seen at the Reading Festival in 1998...

..and again in 2002, where Bernard slipped in a little of the original "taking drugs with me" lyrics..

Fast forward to New Order in concert in 2008 in Scotland...

In 2011, George Michael released a bizarrely over-Autotuned single-only cover of "True Faith", which went to #27 on the British singles chart...

Back to the band in action in 2012 at Bestival which was released as a live album which made the British charts...

...and a much better take in Berlin a year later...

In 2014, singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor contributed a respectable cover to a BBC 80's compilation...

and finally, New Order from their 2015 tour...

Up tomorrow: Decades before T-Pain, an R&B single vocodes his way to becoming your boyfriend.