I’m here to talk to you about the 40th anniversary of “Enola Gay”, the lead single from your second album, Organisation. To celebrate the anniversary of a single that remains at the center of the band’s live set and recorded catalogue, PopMatters’ Max Shand met with Andy McCluskey to discuss a lifetime of making intelligent pop music, remaining innovative over a 40-year career, and how popular culture is eating its history. More than any of their other songs, “Enola Gay” is evidence of how OMD masterfully captured the concerns of the modern world and packaged them up in such a way that they won over the mainstream.
OMD adopted the conventions of German electronic music and applied them to catchy melodies, tying the two together in an act that went on to define the new pop of the 1980s. Anyone with an idea could produce it musically.Īndroid Face Image by bluebudgie from Pixabay The reliance upon synthesizers, instruments that were becoming increasingly affordable and required little knowledge to play, also meant that an artist’s traditional characteristics were being challenged. German bands like Kraftwerk, Neu!, and Faust made heavy use of synthesizers, followed unconventional song structures, and seemed committed to unfashionable but relevant subject matter like urban development, technology, and the role of the individual in a mechanized society. Listening out for a counter-narrative to everything they heard blaring from UK radios, they found what they were after in experimental German music. The popular music of the 1970s as OMD saw it had become senseless and overblown with uninventive guitar-work, mythological narratives (looking at you, prog-rock), and financial barriers to entry. Taking a detour from the typical source of lyrical inspiration, love, and human experience, OMD lifted their songs from engineering handbooks, historical stories, and wartime politics. Synthesizing intellectual lyrics with popular sensibilities, “Enola Gay” reflects bandmates Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys’ efforts to bring the cerebral and often, commonplace, into the mainstream. While the last 40 years have seen OMD produce multiple charting records, break into America with Pretty in Pink‘s “If You Leave”, and more recently, record the critically acclaimed The Punishment of Luxury, it’s “Enola Gay” that most honestly captures the band’s triumphant legacy. `Enola Gay, it shouldn't fade in our dreams away.“Enola Gay”, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s (OMD’s) wonderfully indulgent synthpop classic named after the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, has just turned 40.
It could be regarded as an anti-nuclear or even an anti-war protest song but the overriding message conveyed through the lyrics is not to forget about such events in our past:
The song's release coincided with Margaret Thatcher's - British Prime Minister at that time - controversial decision to allow US nuclear missiles to be stationed in Britain. The line, `Is mother proud of little boy today,' makes reference to the bombs codename `Little Boy' and probably hints at the writer's need to vent his spleen on the subject. Recurring lines highlight the exact timing of the drop and how the operation was carried out just like any other ordinary day. The lyrics clearly express McCluskey's opinion on the matter with the line, `It shouldn't ever have to end this way,' letting us know his feelings on the dropping of the bomb. The bomb, the first used in an act of war, was carried by an American B-29 plane named Enola Gay and her mission in 1945 effectively ended World War II. Written by OMD frontman Andy McCluskey, this track was released in 1980 and tells the story of the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.