"World" (The Price of Love) by New Order, Thursday, January 14, 2021
Republic was the end of an era for New Order. The band’s popularity was at its peak after scoring hits in America even outside of the dance hall. But it was an album that the band didn’t want to make. According to then-bassist Peter Hook, the band’s music club in Manchester, The Haçienda, was in dire financial straits, and the band’s record label Factory Records threatened to go bankrupt. The band members’ funds were tied up in Factory Record and the finances of the club were also entwined. However, bassist Hook and lead singer Bernard Sumner were “at the point in the relationship where you hate each other’s stinking guts.”
BREAKING IS A CRIME. Republic was released in 1993 and charted the best of all New Order’s albums on the Billboard album charts. The band went on a five-year hiatus after playing the Reading Festival in August, and New Order’s millennial records were nothing like the height of their popularity in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s. The album artwork for Republic has been interpreted in several ways. Depicting a house on fire on the left-half of the cover and beach holiday on the right half, critics have interpreted the artwork to be a statement about the forest fires in California or the race riots in Los Angelos in 1992. The couple on the beach is blissfully unaware that their house burns while they are enjoying their vacation. Other critics have pointed out that the cover draws a similarity between modern decadence and the burning and collapse of the Roman Empire, a republic that became corrupted as it forgot its ideals. And yet others interpret the artwork along with many of the songs on Republic as a dig at their record label for forcing the band to record a record they didn't want to write and for forcing a dysfunctional band to work together.
HEAR ME TALK, BUT NEVER SPEAK. In case you've missed it the world is constantly in crisis. New Order's "World," their penultimate song before a lengthy hiatus is that topic. What's the problem? Love is a commodity on the markets, but apparently, it's a non-renewable resource. Although it's a thinly-clad metaphor for prostitution, the song also reminds us that love for mankind is bought and sold, and that resource might be used up. The year is 1992. George W. Bush is in office. The Cold War had ended and with it many problems had come to a close. But just as one war finishes others begin. Bosnia. The Rwandan genocide. Blame of the "other" for the economy. David Koresh and Timothy McVeigh. Clinton's impeachment. Yes, I'm zooming ahead over the decade. All of these were things I heard in the background of my childhood. Given all of those images of the 90s in a time that was interpreted at church to be apocalyptic (and the title of the song: "World" inserted between the band's name New Order isn't lost on me), I think about how a lack of love and empathy is the world's primary problem.
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