TS: Devo's "Beautiful World" vs. Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart Again"

I was very troubled by Target's use of that song in a commercial.

Yeah, the Target folks certainly missed the point. I would say, "Shame on Devo" for allowing Target the rights to the tune, but on the other hand, they're probably getting a good chuckle (and some bucks) off of it. It sort've reminds me of the Tommy Hilfiger people adopting the Guess Who's "American Woman" for an ad campaign -- completely missing the point that it was a tirade against American imperialism rather than a leggy Yankee blonde.

Joy Division is one of my favorites, but I'll take "Transmission," "Dead Souls" or "These Days" over "LWTUA" any day.

Devo never recorded a ballad, did they

Does the slow acoustic Jocko Homo from the “Now it Can Be Told” live album count?

Does the slow acoustic Jocko Homo from the “Now it Can Be Told” live album count?

― Every post of mine is an expression of eternity (Boring, Maryland),

genuinely one of my all time fave live albums.
the build up from acoustic versions to full on devo is brilliantly done.

No Place Like Home from their 2010 album is kind of a ballad

oooh .. good call ..
love that track.

No Devo ballads then

Beautiful World is such a masterpiece and Devo is like the B52s in that the records critics savaged after their strong start out of the gate are actually great fuckin records. One of the best bands ever

New Traditionalists I think is a really good album, the run of Going Under/Race of Doom/Love Without Anger is one of my favorites on any of theirs and none of them were hits. Only thing that brings it down is the soft production, which I think was due to the tapes getting damaged or something?

Oh, No! It's Devo I also think is secretly really great. It does nail the sound it's going for and front to back is one of the catchiest albums of the decade. One of those albums that's good *because* it's really dumb on purpose.

Everything after that though, I dunno. I can defend Shout! to some extent, I think of it as a really sterilized and synthesized take on 60's bubblegum pop. Definitely got some duds on it though. Total Devo and Smooth Noodle Maps I think are both pretty bad, but I'd maybe reconsider on the latter. I like the comeback album a lot, really wish it wasn't brickwalled though.

it's not for me

the Devo demos (i think?) that were circulating a decade or so back are really great production wise, and preferable to the albums ... though maybe i don't remember ... i can't take sides in this one musically. maybe I vote Devo because Gerald Casale was a total comrade and from Akron and Ian Curtis had his "German thing" but ... not everything has to be about politics idk

Loving Oh No It's Devo a lot. Are they one of these bands like Pixies where purists say you're only supposed to admit to liking the first few records? Arse to that if so.

no, i don't think there are Devo purists like that lol ... though Shout is not as good as the earlier stuff

I do know people who think Devo peaked before they even released their first album

Devo never recorded a ballad, did they

"Beulah" from Devo Live - the Mongoloid Years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbrQHBJNvfk

...it's live, however, so you might say it was not "recorded".

I do know people who think Devo peaked before they even released their first album

<I>No Devo ballads then</I>

Not sure if this counts, but they did cover "Somewhere" from "West Side Story."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIKdaeeVvp8

I suppose the acoustic Jocko Homo counts

_I do know people who think Devo peaked before they even released their first album_


While I don’t think that, the first volume of the Mongoloid Years 75-77 is absolutely amazing.

i guess the question with devo is what even counts as a "ballad" anyway? does "buttered beauties" count? or their cover of the lady in the radiator song?

i guess i have complicated feelings about devo. for me, "beautiful world" isn't a suicide song. when i was younger, it was just a statement of fact. my life sucked, and at the time i got a lot of shit for saying that, got called a whiner or whatever, but looking back on it now, no, actually, my life actually did suck, really, really bad. and devo's music kind of spoke to that experience i had.

that said, they don't really hold up for me like they used to, because i've changed, and devo, well, they're just not _queer_. i mean that's why my life sucked, because i was queer in a way that nobody was able or willing to acknowledge or recognize back then. i don't know why their life sucked. i grew up with... i was just the right age when those "hardcore" cds were coming out during my teenage years, so my early experience of devo was that, and a lot of it is fucking brilliant but it's also edgelordy as all hell, so much ironic racism and sexism and shit. and in particular the sense i get from them is that they really resented lesbians for not sleeping with them. there's some really proto-incel stuff in their early work. in particular stuff like their early song "androgyny", the lyrics to which are a pretty bald anti-genderfuck statement.

well, i mean, people change and grow, right? it's like the novel version of _a clockwork orange_. honestly i'm kind of grateful whenever cishet white men grow old and _don't_ start acting like shitty awful people. i think they're a fine group. i also think that literally everything should be queer, and devo just aren't particularly queer.

by the way the cover art to those "hardcore" cds _is_ super fucking queer and i love it so much, i forget the person who did those photo shoots, but they are just _amazing_ photos. so kudos to that photog.

I'm not sure exactly to what extent Devo "grew up" - even the relatively sanitized Oh No It's Devo had some pretty edgy stuff on it. my impression is that a lot of that stuff came from Casale, the guy who released an album under the name "Jihad Jerry" and had a 9/11 themed wedding. but yeah a lot of their stuff strikes me as essentially being anthems for incels, especially on the first 2 albums, plus the Hardcore stuff of course. but I guess "incel" wasn't really a thing back then.

interestingly I've heard of Gary Numan's early stuff referred to as being very queer coded, something which I think even surprised Gary himself, though he does go along with it sometimes in interviews. I don't think I would've picked up on that myself.

"Down in the Park" and "Are Friends 'Electric'?" struck me as queer the moment I heard'em, but I'm biased.

and because I'm queer I placed the quotation marks around the wrong word

jo the waiter as well

I thought it was weird when Devo did those live shows where they played 'hardcore' tracks a few years ago and they changed 'slant-eyed catfish' to 'fancy pants catfish' on Bamboo Bimbo, seems like you might as well not play the song at all if you're wanting avoid offense

it's funny how many of the tracks on the later albums are re-writes of stuff from the Hardcore Devo era, seems like they had a real burst of creativity in the mid to late 70s that they never quite recovered (though I do like the later albums)

I'd always known that Plain Truth is a re-write of Chango, but I only realised the other day that She's Out Of Sync is as well, this is after more than 20 years of listening to all 3 songs regularly, I suppose I just don't have a good ear for this stuff

another thing I didn't pick up on for years is that 'That's Good' is an adaptation of their cover of 'In Heaven Everything Is Fine' from Eraserhead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EzquBCWrbY

Anniversary of Ian Curtis's suicide today.

I think Films is the most incel-ish Gary Numan track, I always though of it as being from the pov of a spree-shooter type who wants to obliterate themselves and obliterate the whole world at the same time, undo everything

i read an anecdote from the late '70s where some lady dismissed them as "queer", and the response of one member of devo to being so labelled is... well i'm not gonna repeat it here. it was kinda peak incel tho.