Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.
I'll be honest, I struggled a bit with Electronic at the time. I didn't really want Johnny Marr songs to sound like New Order, and I definitely didn't want them to sound like The Pet Shop Boys. I was then, as now, more than a little parochial in my tastes, and, if truth be told, was probably not handling the end of The Smiths very well. I tried though, helped by seeing Getting Away With It on 7" for 49p in the Woolworths' bargain bin. I still have that, of course. The vinyl is in great nick, because I didn't play it very often, though the sleeve suffered at Woolies before I got my hands on it, sadly. And it was a great, striking sleeve.
Note the short-lived exclamation mark after the band name
Looking back, I can view Electronic in a kinder light. Certainly kind enough to have invested in their retrospective best of, Get The Message. You could do a lot worse, you really could.
Johnny is barely in this video, a fact I might have appreciated at the time. He does contribute a lovely solo in the middle though. Plus the chorus to this has that killer "clear to see" couplet. All together now...
I love this song. Perfect piece of pop music. The 12" mix is the one, adds some lovely strings to the intro and stretches it out a little. Johnny's guitar solo is a total joy. He played it at Wythenshawe Park in August and it sounded great.
ReplyDeleteSo right about that extended version...
DeleteAs Adam says, a perfect piece of pop music. Just makes me want to dance in a dreamy kind of way!
ReplyDeletePerfect ... until you hear the extended version, which is even better!
DeleteNo commentary on how this is just a thinly-veiled attack on that bloke who just fired his management team?
ReplyDeleteWell, certainly a mickey-take, if not an attack. I think Neil Tennant wrote most of the lyrics though. As for the management team firing, after the spectacularly bad handling of the whole "Johnny turned everything down" public pronouncements, I almost (but only almost) feel a bit sorry for the management team - how do you manage the unmanageable, after all?
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