Robbed hit of the week 8/22/16 - New Order's "Round and Round"...

"Round and Round" - New Order
from the album Technique (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #64 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the British new wave band New Order, who had evolved from their post-punk roots after the dissolution of Joy Division to a synthpop powerhouse with their first American top-40 pop hit "True Faith" in the winter of 1987. That single was taken from their collection Substance, which was a huge success even to this day (it appears on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 best albums of the rock era). They also scored their first #1 dance hit in the U.S. with the "double-A-sided" single "Blue Monday 1988" and "Touched By The Hand Of God" (the former also climbed to #68 on the American pop chart and #3 in the UK). Going to the Spanish vacation island of Ibiza to start recording their next album Technique, there emerge a much stronger gravitation to club music, which was apparent in their experimental first single "Fine Time". The quirky track went to #11 in the UK, and while it missed the pop chart in America, it raced to #2 on the dance chart and #3 for a week on the Modern Rock radio list. The second single from Technique was the busy club jam "Round and Round". With a frenetic beat and a throbbing prominent bass line, it was another dancefloor success, though the acetic lyrics were described by lead singer Bernard Summer to be about former label head Tony Wilson. The video has a few models in black and white with flashes of color subliminally inserted...

While "Round and Round" became the band's second #1 hit on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart, and climbed to #6 on their Modern Rock radio list, the single stalled out at #64 on the pop Hot 100 in May of 1989. Internationally, the single made it to #10 in Ireland, #13 in New Zealand, #20 in Australia, and #21 in their native UK.

A third single from the Technique album, "Run 2" (which ended up giving writing credit to John Denver), reached #49 on the British chart. A stand-alone single for the 1990 FIFA World Cup for football (or, soccer, for us Americans), "World In Motion", topped the UK list, and went to #10 on the American dance chart and #5 Modern rock.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)




Here's the club mix by Kevin Saunderson of Inner City and Ben Grosse that helped it top the Dance Club Play chart in America...

...and the band performing live on TV in 1989...

...and again in 2012 in New Zealand...