Vienna (Ultravox song)

Vienna
Ultravox
publication	January 15, 1981
length	4:37 (single version) 4:53 (album and 12 "version)
Genre (s)	New wave , new romantic , synth-pop
Author (s)	Midge Ure , Billy Currie , Warren Cann, Chris Cross
album	Vienna

Vienna is a 1981 song by Ultravox , written by Midge Ure , Billy Currie , Chris Cross, and Warren Cann. The piece was released on January 15, 1981 as the third single from the album of the same name .

The song stayed at number two on the UK singles chart for four consecutive weeks . With fifth place among the best-selling singles of 1981, it was named Ultravox's most commercially successful track and was named Single of the Year at the BRIT Awards in the same year . In 1993 a new edition of the original version came out. In late 2012, Vienna was voted the UK's number two hit in a poll conducted by BBC Radio 2 and the Official Charts Company .

History of origin

After founding member John Foxx left the band and the music label Island Records canceled the record deal, Midge Ure joined Ultravox in April 1979 as a singer and guitarist. Due to other commitments from Ure, work on the new album did not begin until autumn of the same year. In February 1980 the band signed a new contract with Chrysalis Records . Ure got the inspiration for the song title Vienna , which also gave the album its name, from the wife of the former Rich Kids manager Gerry Hempstead. She suggested that Ure, as a songwriter, should take the piece Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac from 1976 as a model, but mistakenly mistook the legendary figure from Celtic mythology for the Austrian capital. The following day, Ure had the chorus “This means nothing to me, this means nothing to me, Vienna” in mind and began to develop the song musically together with Billy Currie. He wrote about the rehearsals:

“Even when we wrote Vienna we knew it was something special. It was like nothing I had ever heard before. We played it at the end of every day's recording because we all got this huge buzz hearing it. It was so unique with the big overblown powerful ending. "

“As soon as we wrote Vienna , we knew it was something special. I had never heard anything like it before. We played it at the end of every day of recording because we all got this huge amount of excitement while listening. It was so unique with the big, pompous, powerful ending. "

- Midge Ure : in his autobiography If I Was

In the beginning, Ultravox made deliberate false statements about the meaning of the text in press interviews. To increase interest, the band members established a connection to the Vienna Secession around the painter Gustav Klimt . In retrospect, Ure explained that it was a love song, a holiday romance in a strange city that faded after a few days back home.

Instrumentation and harmony structure

Piano solo in G minor before the final chorus

For the album and the single mostly electronic instruments were used, which were either newly acquired or used by the band members in earlier recordings. In addition to his acoustic Ludwig set with Zildjian cymbals, Cann used a Roland CR-78 drum computer and a Synare pad to generate the thunder noise. The Moog Minimoog from Cross provided the bass line. Ure assumed Cello accompanied with a string Keyboard type Yamaha SS-30, followed by the ELCA Rhapsody 610 of Currie. The piano was a studio instrument, the sound of which was electronically alienated by co-producer Conny Plank to emphasize the gloomy mood. Especially for live concerts also stood electronic piano of the brand Yamaha CP-30 are available.

Currie played the solo on a viola that had been amplified by a Barcus Berry customer and had been borrowed from a friend because of the suitable classical timbre. During the recording, Currie was in the entrance area of ​​the RAK studios because the marble walls there formed a natural environment.

Production posed major technical challenges for everyone involved. In 1980 there was no MIDI interface for communication between synthesizers from different manufacturers. In addition, Vienna has several tempo changes that made it necessary to record the drum accompaniment in the middle of the song in individual parts. The other tracks with the keyboards sometimes had to be cut by hand and then joined together again.

In an analysis of the formal structure, the German musician Sascha Beselt ( Mandatory ) explains why Vienna is perceived as “remote”, “oppressive” and therefore “foreign”. The song starts in C major and changes several times to the subdominant F major after the singing begins . The later chorus begins in B flat major and does not fit into the usual harmony during the transition from pre- chorus to chorus and back to the verse. The violin solo uses the parallel keys in G and D minor . On closer inspection it turns out that the piece has F major as its basic key, while the two stanzas predominantly linger on the dominant C major. The structure of the individual chord progressions is accordingly offset and does not correspond to the typical pattern of songwriting and thus also not to the traditional listening habits in pop music.

Music video

Carl Schweighofer's tomb can be seen both on the single cover and in the music video.

In February 1980 Ultravox had produced a music video for the second single Passing Strangers together with director Russell Mulcahy . The 16 mm film with cinemascope effect, shot mainly in black and white, served as a template for the follow-up project. When Chrysalis Records was confronted with the idea of ​​a second album video, Vienna was already at number two on the British single charts. The label was hesitant to recognize the opportunity for worldwide promotion, so the band members were forced to pre-finance the production cost of around £ 6,000.

The shooting took place mainly in London and only partially in Vienna. The opening sequence on cobblestones was done at St Paul's Church in Covent Garden, London . The old Baroque style Kilburn Gaumont Theater was the location for most of the interior scenes, including the winding staircase. For the embassy reception , space was also rented in the Searcys restaurant in central London. The band and crew then traveled to Vienna in a chartered plane for a single day of shooting. The exterior shots proved difficult as many tourist attractions were either closed or covered for renovation during the winter season. The scene in front of St. Stephen's Cathedral , a few sequences in the Vienna Central Cemetery at the tomb of the piano maker Carl Schweighofer and the final shot in front of the Karl Borromäus Church at sunset were used.

The finished video borrows from the film noir era and in particular from the thriller The Third Man, also set in Vienna . It made the single internationally known and, along with Dancing with Tears in My Eyes, is one of the best-known music videos of the 1980s.

Publications and reprints

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Singles

Vienna   DE 14th 04/13/1981 (20 weeks)   AT 8th 04/15/1981 (14 weeks)   UK 2 01/17/1981 (14 weeks) Vienna (1993)   UK 13 02/06/1993 (4 weeks)

The record company Chrysalis Records initially did not want to release Vienna as a single because the song originally had a duration of 5:40 minutes. Even the final album and single version with over four minutes was unsuitable for broadcasting on the radio. It wasn't until Chris Wright, one of the founders of the record label, saw a sold out live performance by the band and the enthusiastic reaction of the audience when the song was performed, that a rethink took place. The song was first played on the radio ten days before Christmas 1980 and repeated many times until it was officially released.

The 7 ″ single was released on January 15, 1981 as a shortened single edit with a playing time of 4:37 minutes. On the B-side is the synth-pop track Passionate Reply (4:17). The 12 ″ -maxi-single also contains Herr X (5:49), a version of the album title Mr. X sung by Warren Cann in German .

In January 1993, Vienna was re-released as a CD single by Chrysalis Records to promote sales of the compilation album If I Was: The Very Best of Midge Ure & Ultravox . A year earlier, Ultravox re-recorded the song with Tony Fenelle as singer and released it in April 1992 in Germany as a vinyl and CD single. Of the original line-up, only keyboardist Billy Currie was there. In addition to the Classic Mix , a Goodnight Vienna Remix was created over seven minutes . On Backing Vocal B-side system of Love was also Alison Limerick involved. The new version of Vienna does not appear on the album Revelation (1993) .

reception

Two days after its release on January 17, 1981, Vienna entered the British singles chart at number 52 and was listed there for a total of 14 weeks. From February 14 to March 7, 1981, the song stayed at number two. The single topped the charts in Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium and made it into the top 20 in Australia and New Zealand. In Great Britain it achieved gold status for more than 400,000 records sold. At the BRIT Awards in 1981 she was named Single of the Year . The new edition reached number 13 in the UK charts in February 1993, while the 1992 version, which was only released in Germany, failed to rank.

In January 2010, a Facebook campaign was launched to help Vienna become the number one hit 30 years after its release through targeted downloading of British online music services in the week of April 4-10, 2010 . The single ended up at number 113.

In a nationwide survey by BBC Radio 2 and the Official Charts Company on the 60th anniversary of the official single charts, Vienna emerged as the best number 2 hit at the end of December 2012.

Dave Thompson of Allmusic writes that the release of Vienna in 1980 caused "amazement" and "disbelief" in the music industry. He establishes a connection to the New Romantic movement of the time and states:

“In fact, Vienna was the apotheosis of all the New Romantics held dear: the romance found in the lush waltz in its center, the melancholy that rippled through its milieu, the feeling of isolation implicit in its minimalist opening and, indeed, its very opulence and pretentiousness, all were the leitmotif of the movement. No song better skewered the genre's fascination with a long decayed past. "

"In fact, Vienna was the apotheosis of everything that the New Romantics loved: the romance of the lush waltz in the center, the melancholy that runs through the milieu, the implicit feeling of isolation in the minimalist beginning and certainly the sheer opulence and ostentation, they were all the leitmotif of the movement. No song has captured the fascination of the genre with a long crumbling past better. "

- Dave Thompson : at Allmusic

Cover versions

Since it was first published, the song has been reinterpreted by various artists. Some of the more popular arrangements include:

• Ed Starink ( Synthesizer Greatest Volume 2 , 1989)
• Kirlian Camera ( Angel of Death. The Fall of Life , 1991)
• Vic Reeves ( Ruby Trax - The NME's Roaring Forty , 1992)
• Celestial Season ( Solar Lovers , 1995)
• Dump ( I Can Hear Music , 1995)
• The King's Singers ( Spirit Voices , 1997)
• Deep Red ( Darkwaters , 1998)
• Gregorian ( Masters of Chant , 2000)
• Russell Watson ( The Voice , 2000)
• Clawfinger ( A Whole Lot of Nothing , 2001)
• Infernal ( From Paris to Berlin , 2004)
• FranKo (2011)
• Laszlo ( heartbeat , 2016)

The British pop band Take That took over part of the chorus for the song Eight Letters from the 2010 album Progress .

Quotes in film and television

The 1996 episode A Song for Europe of the British sitcom Father Ted jokingly claims that Vienna was written under a pseudonym by a priest named Benny Cake and became the number one hit in the UK. The song is also on the soundtrack to the Italian drama Quo Vadis, Baby? from 2005 and featured in two episodes of the first season of the mystery television series Ashes to Ashes - Back to the 80s in 2008 . In the 2010 television film Worried About the Boy , which traces the life of Boy George from Culture Club , Vienna can be heard alongside Hiroshima mon Amour . The science fiction television series Doctor Who also makes reference to the 2013 episode Cold War . After traveling back in time to 1983 , Russian scientist Professor Grisenko , played by David Warner , listens to the song on his Walkman and asks whether the band will break up in the future. Vienna is played on the radio in the episode I Am Abassin Zadran of the American television series The Americans , which was also broadcast in April 2015 and is set at the time of the Cold War in the 1980s . In 2017, the song was not used in the final episode of the Netflix series Dead Girls Lies . In 2018 the song was played in the final episode The Murder of Gianni Versace of the American television series American Crime Story .

literature

• Robin Eggar: Midge Ure, If I Was… The Autobiography . Virgin Books, 2005, ISBN 0-7535-1077-4 , pp. 83-92 .
• Warren Cann, Jonas Wårstad: Ultravox: The Story - Warren Cann interviewed by Jonas Wårstad . 1997, p. 31–38, 42, 44/45 (English, ultravox.org.uk [PDF; 4.4 MB ]).

Web links

• Vienna at Allmusic (English)
• Lyrics of Vienna in LyricWikia

Individual evidence

1. ^ Robin Eggar: Midge Ure, If I Was ... The Autobiography . 2005, p. 84/85 .
2. ^ ^{A b} Robin Eggar: Midge Ure, If I Was ... The Autobiography . 2005, p. 90 .
3. ^ Robin Eggar: Midge Ure, If I Was ... The Autobiography . 2005, p. 91 .
4. ↑ Warren Cann, Jonas Wårstad: Ultravox: The Story - Warren Cann interviewed by Jonas Wårstad . 1997, p. 42 .
5. ^ Robin Eggar: Midge Ure, If I Was ... The Autobiography . 2005, p. 88 .
6. ↑ ^{a b} Violas Violins Synths. Billy Currie, accessed March 16, 2015 . 
7. ↑ Midge Ure even speaks of the studio toilet in his autobiography (p. 88)
8. ^ ^{A b} Robin Eggar: Midge Ure, If I Was ... The Autobiography . 2005, p. 89 .
9. ↑ Sascha Beselt: Analytica Musicae: "Vienna" (Ultravox). (PDF; 16 kB) 2011, accessed on March 19, 2015 . 
10. ↑ Warren Cann, Jonas Wårstad: Ultravox: The Story - Warren Cann interviewed by Jonas Wårstad . 1997, p. 45 .
11. ↑ Warren Cann, Jonas Wårstad: Ultravox: The Story - Warren Cann interviewed by Jonas Wårstad . 1997, p. 44 .
12. ^ ^{A b} Robin Eggar: Midge Ure, If I Was ... The Autobiography . 2005, p. 92 .
13. ↑ Vienna in the German single charts ( Memento of the original from November 21, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. musicline.de 
14. ^ Vienna in the Austrian hit parade austriancharts.at
15. ↑ Vienna in the British single charts officialcharts.com
16. ↑ British Rock & Pop Awards 1979–1981. WordPress, October 10, 2014, accessed on March 20, 2015 . 
17. ↑ Anthony Barnes: Ultravox hit 'Vienna' named nation's favorite number two single In: The Independent , December 31, 2012
18. ^ Dave Thompson: Vienna - Ultravox. AllMusic, accessed March 12, 2015 . 
19. ↑ Samir H. Köck: "Take That": A boy group recalls its virtues In: Die Presse , December 10, 2010
20. ^ Ultravox. IMDb, accessed on March 20, 2015 . 
21. ↑ Erik Adams: Review: The Americans: “I Am Abassin Zadran”. The AV Club, April 15, 2015, accessed April 16, 2015 .