As an eighties kid, synth pop has been pumping in my blood ever since that first day I turned on my MTV. There’s some debate as to who’s considered a synth pop band and who isn’t. For this September Music Twitter challenge – #SynthPopSeptember – I’m focusing more on what’s considered synth pop, not who. The songs I’m featuring on Mental Jukebox this month aren’t solely composed of synthesizers. There may be drums, bass, and dare I say, electric guitars. But each of these songs were picked because the synthesizer is core to its being.
More than the average band, New Order recorded dozens of tracks that never made their way onto their studio releases. “1963” was one of them. This was a song that seemed vastly undervalued by the band at first. But luckily it didn’t stay off the radar for long, despite being the b-side to the bold and brash “True Faith” single. I remember first discovering the song on Long Island’s WDRE (WLIR), which had a healthy habit of playing deep cuts and forgotten tracks. Nearly a decade later, “1963” eventually became a single in its own right. My question for the band is, what took so long?
“1963” was a rare treat for New Order fans like me. A lot of the band’s synth-driven work was either slow-tempo or up-tempo. But this track is as pure mid-tempo as it gets. The highlight for me are the lyrics. This just might be the most well-written song from Sumner. He created a peculiar fictional narrative around J.F.K., Marilyn Monroe and Lee Harvey Oswald. It’s brilliant storytelling. Then, musically, Sumner’s shimmery riffs give way to Gillian Gilbert’s synth grooves that toggle between dreamy and doom.
“I saw hatred in his eyes. But he never meant to hurt me.”