Monday Morning’s Earworm №92

Fade to Grey by Visage

It’s a snatch or a snippet, a captured fragment, a line or two, or maybe a bit more, from a cultural reference that stays in your head, that keeps bubbling up, accompanying your day.

It’s part of the language of your landscape that stays in your mind, whether it’s one single line, a couplet or maybe a whole verse, from a poem or song, or a part of a speech from a play, or a quote from a book, or something you heard somebody say, that won’t let you go.

Sometimes it won’t involve what we call language at all. It could be purely a musical phrase that plays on your time, on a loop that follows you through day and night.

That’s what an earworm is. And so is this…

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Fade to Grey by Visage

UK Chart peak: №8 Chart peak: DNC

Lay Off the Digital Nose Candy

The internet was on drugs when I was looking into this dusty old classic. When I asked it for this songs US Chart peak, it told me it got to №12 in the States, and №1 here in the UK.

Methinks Google Chrome’s been snorting too many ones and zeros. Lay off the digital marching powder, it’s no good for you.

The UK Official Charts website, the song’s own Wikipedia page and wonderful new discovery just a few minutes ago, The Chart Time Machine(it’s like a class-A drug for anoraks!), all concur it got to №8 in the UK, with no mention of the USA chartwise.

Faded Memories

My strongest memory of this is not courtesy of the radio, but courtesy of an old flatmate. In the early to mid-80s I was studying A-levels at Stevenson College in Edinburgh, and living in digs at Broomhouse, just across the playing fields from the college.

The landlady had two rooms she rented to students at the college, and my fellow lodger, Andy, was a bit of an electro-pop kid. I remember he almost idolised Gary Newman at the time, but as well as the aeroplane killer, I became familiar with other hardcore electro-pop, synth bands of the time.

Names such as Classix Nouveaux, A Flock of Seagulls, OMD, Ultravox and this morning’s star turn, Visage, among others, all took turns on the Sony Walkman knock-off I’d bought from Dixons, and the tiny speakers I had for it.

I wasn’t much of a fan to start with, but I got to like most of them over time. Andy was most impressed when I came home one day clutching a cassette of Heaven and Hell by Vangelis.

This was no synth pop album full of wannabe singles; it was a full-blown synth-based symphonic work with only the shortest of the three tracks containing vocals, which were by Jon Anderson from Yes.

But I digress.

Visage the Album

Running through some of the tracks from the album on YouTube, only the title song, “Visage” and “Mind of a Toy” ring any bells apart from “Fade to Grey” itself. It’s not much of a surprise, as they were the singles from the album.

The synth sound of the 80s is very much stuck in amber now, as a sign of its times, but it’s a sound that can still reward your listening. The coldness, or perhaps the remoteness, of some of those synth-driven songs can still invoke sci-fi chills.

But then the cream of every crop, however much they resonate with their time, acquires a timelessness when enough years have passed. Quality has an indefinable something, whether that’s in music, food, film, fashion, furniture or anything else.

As a phenomenon, the bands named above are worth your while exploring. I try to live a “I’ll listen to anything once” life, music-wise. I’d encourage the same in anyone else who’s exploring the musical palettes of the 80s or any other decade.

The Song of this Morning’s Moment.

“Fade to Grey” was to be the most successful single Visage would have, full stop, not just the most successful on this album. The song began life as an instrumental, written by Billie Currie and Chris Payne. Currie and Payne had both worked with Gary Numan and worked on the song during sound checks on tour with Numan. Currie would later go on to join Midge Ure, one of the founders of Visage, in Ultravox.

Visage, the album, would be produced by Martin Rushent and the members of Visage, the band. The album was recorded during 1979 and 80, and released in November 1980.

Unlike “Fade to Grey”, Visage, the album wouldn’t break into the UK top ten, peaking at №13. It would only make the top ten in Germany, where it went to №1.

“Fade to Grey” is a classic of its time and its type. Epitomising both the 1980s and the synth bands that were a unique part of the decade's musical landscape.

Landscape? Now there’s a thought…

As always, let me know in the comments what you thought of this week's earworm