Songs of the Week - Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division - The Best of Joy Division and Need You Now - Lady Antebellum - Need You Now

Love will Tear us Apart - Check the original video clip out on youtube @

http://youtu.be/qHYOXyy1ToI

You couldn’t get two very different songs from two very different bands in two very different centuries. But they both do it for me in very different ways.

Firstly, I knew very little about Joy Division until I watched a movie style bio with a focus on Ian Curtis, their lead singer.  The movie, called ‘Control’ was released in 2006. A small-time pub band from Manchester, they began there short-lived climb to fame in the late seventies and it finished just the day before they were to embark on a two week US tour when Curtis was found dead. Curtis was an enigmatic character, quirky songwriter with a unique and unforgettable stage presence, doing what became known as his epilepsy dance.For me he sounds like a cross between Jim Morrison and Iva Davies if that is at all imaginable. Joy Division’s music sounds like Nirvana raw, before the studio effects came into play. Curtis, married young to his best mates girlfriend, he worked as a public servant finding jobs for people with disabilities. Ian Curtis was also diagnosed with epilepsy, a diagnosis that he struggled with including whether or not to take the medication the doctors pushed onto him.

While the other band members and his mates were pubbing and listening to bands Curtis had the responsibility of a wife and child, holding down a job and then Annik came along. Annik was a French journalist that Curtis fell in love with and that was that. He loved his wife, he loved Annik and love eventually tore them all apart. Ian Curtis took his own life in  his marital home in May 1980. He was 23. Joy Division ceased and New Order rose from the ashes. The Best of Joy Division album is an interesting mix of greatest hits although some of the tracks suffer from the quality of the mixing. Watch the movie ‘Control‘ I know you will buy this album. I did.  You’ll catch yourself singing Love Will Tear Us Apart on your way to the car or bus. It’s a perfect ipod tune.

Now for Lady Antebellum. My introduction to them came through a music channel that was a part of our four English speaking TV stations when we moved to Lausanne last July. This music channel would play the same songs every night and Need You Now was one of the songs. I knew lady Antebellum had that Nashville sound but had no idea who they were until Jo and I watched the 2011 Grammy awards a couple of months back. Lady Antebellum picked up five Grammys that night including Album of the Year and Song of the Year for ‘Need You Now’. 

Lady Antebellum is a country music group formed in Nashville, Tennessee in 2006. The trio is composed of Charles Kelley (lead and background vocals), Dave Haywood (background vocals, guitar, piano, mandolin) and Hillary Scott (lead and background vocals). (Wikipedia)

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They sound great, they look good and they can write and produce to the accepted formula and that takes a certain talent. Plenty of hooks on this album, enough to remind me of what a great time Jo and I had in those down town Nashville honky tonks back in 2008. John Wehlow I guarantee will buy Need You Now if he doesn’t already have it in his collection.