Blue Monday, World in Motion, Perfect Kiss, and semi-forgotten Newsweek press coverage

Back on December 30, I ended up sharing (among several other things) a New Order live performance of "Blue Monday" in a BBC studio.

This, as well as this post in Private Displays of Public Affection, got me to thinking about the first time that I ever heard of New Order.

Back in Reed College, I subscribed to Newsweek as a form of rebellion against my parents (who subscribed to TIME). I believe that it was Newsweek that had an article on "the new music" that mentioned Human League and New Order (and, if my memory serves me correctly, Boy George and Annie Lennox as the new music poster children). Unfortunately, I can't confirm this because Newsweek, unlike TIME, apparently does not maintain an online archive.

The article spent more time talking about the Human League ("Dare" was already out), but it did include a little blurb about this other band called New Order that was doing more adventurous things in electronic music. This would have been around the time of "Movement," but before "Power, Corruption, and Lies" and you-know-what, so Newsweek obviously didn't talk about dance music at all.

I tried to see if I could find any other early New Order press coverage online, but failed to find any. If you know of any, please leave links in the comments.

So here is the BBC performance that I referenced:



P.S. Among the forums in New Order Online is one called World in Motion. And no, it's not about earthquakes. It's about "the beautiful game." You know why.



P.P.S. I had three songs pop into my head this morning, one of which was the New Order song "Perfect Kiss." Here goes.