Mourning England in Song. Part 4 - 1980 Love will tear us apart - Joy Division

Readying myself for what feels like a forced emigration, I am putting together the soundtrack of a whole life spent living in England. You can read more about why I am doing this here: https://kierkegaardslunch.blogspot.com/2026/08/mourning-england-in-song-part-1.html

1980. Punk has become post-punk. New Wave was happening - though to be honest (and I had been paying attention) I was never really clear what New Wave really was. New Romantic was coming but not quite here yet, though The Blitz had been up and running for a year. Bands like OMD and Ultravox were breaking through - synthpop apostles of what was to come, without as yet the blouses and the eye makeup. 

For me 1980 was my final year at school. A levels, then a futile attempt to to get into St Catherine's College, Cambridge. When that failed I was left with months to fill before going up to Leeds instead (something I never regretted as I had a great time - did I mention that time I vomited in David Ball's garden, after a couple too many drinks one Saturday night? For those at the back he played keyboards for Leeds band Soft Cell). 

Though I listened to Massive-Joy-Division-Fan John Peel religiously, my memory of this legendary song is really located in 1981 when I got to university and started to hear it. All the time. Which was absolutely fine, because it was, and is, magnificent. I had very little real sense of Joy Division till then, but I will always remember this song being on the jukebox - real coins into a real machine playing real vinyl - in a basement coffeeshop-cum-bar in the Students Union building, that smelled of plastic seats, damp and unwashed undergraduates. Of course, Ian Curtis was dead by the time I started my course. Tormented by his epilepsy diagnosis and mental health issues, he hanged himself in his kitchen one evening. Love Will Tear Us Apart is a swansong of sorts for him. I simply loved Peter Hook's unforgettable bass theme throughout, the rhythm guitar layered over, with that brittle snare drum pace and the liquid keyboards floating around above. And of course Curtis's voice; smooth, melancholy, inquisitive, restrained. 

I never saw them play it live, I was too late. But I have seen both New Order and Peter Hook (masterfully) perform this song in the years since - and there's a particularly poignant version out there by the former - who went back to the Bataclan in Paris after the massacre and performed it within their set. 

For me, the song will always mean being 19, everything front of me, the feeling of freedom and belief in an edgy, working class Northern city where I'd never before been. After lectures, listening to it almost on repeat as every third person picked it on the jukebox in that university bar, down the corridor from the launderette and just near the bookshop. Where did all those years go?

If Ultravox's 1980 song Vienna had been up against almost anything else of the era I might well have chosen it. In other possible contenders that year, we've got That's Entertainment by The Jam, Messages by OMD and Mystery Achievement, one of my favourite Pretenders tracks. All great songs, but up against the one that in 2002 was picked by NME as the best single in history, they weren't going to make it...

Till next time...