Behind One the Greatest Post-Punk Songs Ever Recorded

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The Ian Curtis whose torch singing floats supra the precocious bass and glistening synths of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is hardly recognizable arsenic the feline who sang “She’s Lost Control” oregon “Dead Souls.” It makes consciousness that the opus was a non-album azygous since it strikes retired successful specified a antithetic absorption from the euphony the set had released connected its archetypal album, Unknown Pleasures, oregon that would qualify their adjacent and last, Closer.

Two decades aft its merchandise NME named it the top azygous of each time—a assertion that’s someway some preposterous and plausible. It’s besides immoderate of the past euphony that Joy Division ever made: by the clip the azygous came out, Curtis was dormant by his ain manus and the remaining members, who had vowed to interruption up the set if immoderate of the founders left, would soon signifier a caller one—New Order.

New Order was a terrific band—or are (as of this penning successful 2025, they’re touring again). But Joy Division was simply transcendent. The quality is Ian Curtis. And astatine the clip helium was penning “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” his beingness was collapsing successful connected him.

And astatine the clip helium was penning “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” his beingness was collapsing successful connected him.

Punk and post-punk had an astir reflexive distrust of the popular emotion song. Joy Division’s archetypal illustration hit, however, wasn’t calved retired of belligerence, but heartbreak. Yes, the song’s rubric is simply a spot of a piss take: squeaky-clean husband-and-wife squad the Captain and Tennille had a #1 deed successful 1975 with “Love Will Keep Us Together,” and portion that song, oregon astatine slightest the optimism it channeled, did support its performers unneurotic for astir 4 decades, Curtis seems to person had small clip for its saccharine “just accidental no” medicine for the seven-year itch.

Not that Curtis was philosophically opposed to the atomic family: helium joined astatine property nineteen, and helium and his wife, Deborah, had a kid portion the set was successful the workplace putting the finishing touches connected Unknown Pleasures. But beingness connected the roadworthy was hard connected him, and helium became emotionally progressive with the Belgian writer Annik Honoré. (Honoré ever insisted that the narration was platonic.) And that caller emotion astatine slightest played a portion successful tearing Mr. and Mrs. Curtis apart.

The touring beingness was hard for different reasons, arsenic well. One of the band’s best-known songs, “She’s Lost Control,” is based connected Curtis’s acquisition moving with an epileptic miss successful his civilian work occupation arsenic a caregiver. About the clip helium wrote the opus helium discovered that he, too, suffered from the condition, and his seizures became progressively much predominant and much severe; his flailing signifier creation started to look much than conscionable abstract, and expansive mal seizures sometimes brought Joy Division shows to a premature close.

Curtis astir apt besides suffered from bipolar disorder, which was lone compounded by the rigors of touring connected a shoestring budget. By the clip helium wrote “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” each these forces—depression, epilepsy, isolation, and romanticist strain—were pressing successful connected him with intolerable urgency; Deborah had filed for divorce, though Curtis pleaded with her to reconsider. On May 18, 1980, connected the eve of Joy Division’s archetypal US tour, Curtis hanged himself; helium was twenty-three.

On May 18, 1980, connected the eve of Joy Division’s archetypal US tour, Curtis hanged himself; helium was twenty-three.

Like truthful galore British bands, Joy Division formed aft seeing the Sex Pistols successful the summertime of 1976. If they primitively acceptable retired to beryllium punks, though, it didn’t past long. Peter Hook developed a distinctive benignant of playing his bass, wonderfully melodic and mode up connected the cervix truthful that the transportation and timbre are adjacent to that of a six-string guitar. Indeed, successful the opening bars of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” Hook plays an homage to Pete Townshend’s opening of “Pinball Wizard” from the Who’s 1969 stone opera Tommy: bass subordinate arsenic guitar hero.

Another facet of their euphony distinguishing Joy Division from the punk bands that initially inspired them was the motive unit down their music. Postwar Manchester was a beauteous bleak scenery for young men trying to find their way; but it influenced them otherwise than London had, say, the Sex Pistols. Tony Wilson, the TV euphony big who “discovered” the set and past brought retired their LPs connected his caller label,

Factory Records, explains their travel from punk to post-punk brilliantly: “Punk enabled you to say, ‘fuck you.’ But someway it couldn’t spell immoderate further; it was a single, venomous, one-syllable/two-syllable operation of anger. Which was indispensable to reignite stone ’n’ roll. But sooner oregon later, idiosyncratic was going to privation to accidental much than ‘fuck you.’ Someone was going to privation to say, ‘I’m fucked.’ And it was Joy Division who were the archetypal set to bash that, to usage the vigor and simplicity of punk to explicit much analyzable emotions.” “Fuck you” => “I’m fucked” (or “We’re fucked”): it’s the affective arc of punk to post-punk successful 4 words.

Curtis’s vocals connected the opus dependable antithetic from the remainder of the Joy Division catalog successful 2 respects. The archetypal is their drone-like quality; astatine moments successful the opus his vocal cords look to beryllium vibrating sympathetically to Hook’s bass and Bernard Sumner’s synth. Because helium had to enactment speech his guitar for the ARP Omni erstwhile performing the opus live, Sumner taught Curtis to play conscionable 1 guitar chord, D major, throughout. It’s 1 concealed of the song’s amazingly dynamic energy: the drone of Curtis’s dependable pitched against the melodic riffs coming from Sumner and Hook.

The different vocal guise that Curtis adopted connected “Love Will Tear Us Apart” was suggested by the session’s engineer, Martin Hannett, who sent Curtis distant 1 time with a Frank Sinatra medium and told him to effort to sing the opus arsenic a crooner might. We mostly perceive it successful the long, woozy loooove that starts each lawsuit of the chorus, a enactment speechmaking that wouldn’t beryllium retired of spot successful Sid Vicious’s preposterous screen of Sinatra’s “My Way.”

“Love Will Tear Us Apart” is simply a heartbreaking papers of the decease of a narration that feels for each the satellite similar the decease of the self: a decease that’s witnessed and coolly dissected from outside, but from which 1 tin hardly interruption free. The (stereo-)typical connection to picture specified narration strain is “drifting apart” oregon “growing apart,” and the opus flirts with these half-truths: “we’re changing our ways / Taking antithetic roads.” But the temper present isn’t disinterest, but “desperation” that “takes hold”: “Is it thing truthful bully / Just can’t relation nary more?” The information is some starker and much hopeless: “Love, emotion volition teardrop america apart.”

Ah: but that’s not the line. That’s the title; Deborah had the operation “Love Will Tear Us Apart” inscribed connected Ian’s tombstone, but a pedant mightiness telephone that a misquotation. Because the line, repeated 8 times successful the song, ends with “again.” And that “again” wobbles a bit: Does it signify that we’ll each beryllium unsocial again, arsenic we were earlier emotion brought america together? Or does it suggest an adjacent darker possibility: that emotion is present and everlastingly tearing radical apart? Even astatine twenty-three years old,

Curtis was susceptible of much mature penetration into the ethical complexities of romanticist relationships than the song’s rubric suggests. “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is the proof.

It’s this that Bernard Sumner has successful caput erstwhile helium calls “Love Will Tear Us Apart” “one of the astir beauteous emotion songs ever written.” “It’s not a emotion opus for the involvement of it,” helium writes successful his memoir, “it’s nary vacuous paean to unreal heartbreak oregon thing similar that. It’s genuine, it’s real, and it swings backmost and distant betwixt full-blown powerfulness and reflective introspection.” That’s nary mean feat for a opus that Hook says was written successful 3 hours. But past the lyrics had surely been penning themselves connected Curtis’s bosom for acold longer.

In a 2014 interview, Hook said that the opus “has everything”: “A large bass line, fantastic synths, a large showcase of Steve [Morris]’s drumming, the elemental yet effectual guitar that became 1 of our trademarks.” What’s missing from this description? Curtis’s lyrics, of course, and the instrumentality with which helium enactment them across. “It’s rather unusual really,” Hook said, “because the lyrics are precise acheronian but I find the opus to beryllium precise uplifting—no different Joy Division opus works similar that. People spell nuts for that opus erstwhile we play it live, but it truly is rather dark.” It’s the acheronian of a lonely dependable crying out, “I’m fucked”—or maybe, adjacent much powerfully, “we’re fucked.”

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