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Song Stories

“Enola Gay”

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark | 1980

"Enola Gay" is a synthpop song with an unlikely provenance: It was named after the bomber (which, in turn, was named after the pilot's mother) that dropped the devastating "Little Boy" atomic bomb on Hiroshima during WWII. "Many people simply don't know what it's actually about," Andy McCluskey of the British duo said. "Some even thought it was a coded message that we were gay." Actually, OMD had a much simpler explanation as to where the song came from. "We were both geeks about WWII airplanes," he said. "The most famous and influential single bomber was Enola Gay. Obvious choice for us, really."

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“The Killing Moon”
Echo & The Bunnymen | 1984
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“At Home He's a Tourist”
Gang of Four | 1979

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Song Stories

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The Joy Formidable | 2011

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”

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