Joy Division's Best Song Ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFPLk5mJ1D4

I also somehow managed to have "She Lost Control" listed twice. This is why I am usually not awake this early...

I humbly suggest people vote for the one without the number after it, if "She's Lost Control" they like.

Interestingly enough, that is the track I am voting for although I cannot see anything other than "Love Will Tear Us Apart" winning, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OqO3hH6KEY

First one on the first album: "Disorder."

thought about this for 0.001 of a second and the answer is "decades".

Noodle's posts remind me of one of my favorite Joy Division covers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZwXCDqlE9I

lol @ people who want to vote for songs other than disorder

there's no room for the weak

there's nothing there at all

hoping for something else

"New Dawn Fades"

i like She's Lost Control being listed twice, much prefer the 12" version

i really like when Barney gets to noodle about for a bit e.g. "No Love Lost" and "Dead Souls"

Torn between 'Twenty Four Hours' and 'These Days'.

weirdly my brain won't let me think of actual joy division songs and instead keeps going back to the killers' "shadowplay" and gvsb's "she's lost control"

anyhoo, kneejerk choice is "transmission" gonna just go and vote for that

On any given day it could be one of a large selection... This is hard, but 'Isolation' is winning it for me today.

Also, ewwwwwwwwwwww - the killers' "shadowplay". I didn't know this existed. Yuck yuck yuck.

i feel like "ceremony" should be here even though they never recorded a studio version.

anyway "transmission," i guess, but it could be a lot of them.

at least i don't think they ever recorded a studio version. all the ones i know are live. or maybe demos.

there is at least one studio version, maybe more, which are kind of demos. only one that was officially released. none of which sound very good.

yeah that might be why i am remembering them all as live.

i remember a pretty intense but shitty-sounding version on the box set.

that's the non-Still version, which was a studio demo. there are bootleg other versions (several) around, none of which sound much better though. I think that had they really recorded that song, it would have easily been a top contender for their best.

there's a 'rehearsal' version here that sounds terrible http://neworder-recycle.blogspot.com/2011/05/recycle-record-store-day-ceremony-30th.html

"transmission" or "isolation," impossible to decide

Sound of Music. Massive sludgy/spiky despair.

yes!

Atmosphere

"A Means to an End" -- I love the drums; there's a sense of almost unbearable friction, as if each part of the kit was a slab of metal struggling to lock into place. The bassline sounds like a perpetual motion machine. The guitar riff is perfect, the palm-muting is perfect. And Curtis's voice strikes that great halfway point between resignation and anger. Like all their best work, it sounds like a band still figuring out how they want to sound, how they all fit together. That tension, for me, defines them, and it's the big thing that none of their imitators and successors could achieve because, of course, they wanted to sound like JD.

Yeah, or maybe that. Def. 2nd.

'Twenty Four Hours'.

Seeing them all listed like this reinforces how awesome their song *titles* are.

"Disorder". That opening, that end. Perfect.

I generally enjoy "Closer" more as an album than "Unknown Pleasures", but think the latter has the best stand-alone songs. Or maybe just more "hits". Yeah, that's probably it. "Hits".

"Disorder" for me too

almost impossible to choose, but pitched in for Heart and Soul

The one that impressed me most was "Dead Souls"

either atmosphere or passover I figure

new dawn fades

^ goldenheart b-side?

lol

I think you meant "Digital."

"Day of the Lords" because I love some of the sludgy live versions and I don't expect it to get much love here.

First one on the first album: "Disorder."
lol @ people who want to vote for songs other than disorder
"Disorder". That opening, that end. Perfect.
"Disorder" for me too

^ these people otm

my impulse is "disorder" but I can never remember which JD songs are which by looking at titles, maybe I need to make me a spotify playlist

could be a dozen different things but I decided a while ago to always say Transmission

Insight, 'cos it's interrupted by an awesome laser battle in the middle.

either Eternal or Decades for me. will cast my vote when i've given it a bit more thought.

best warsaw song: "digital"

Went with 'Shadowplay' because that buildup is just monstrous. Epitomizes that angry/helpless dynamic perfectly.

Twenty Four Hours over She's Lost Control, Transmission, and Heart & Soul.

"No Love Lost" with "Novelty" a close second.

I need to listen to this band more since I'm not finding much new rock lately.

Probably not a popular opinion, but Digital may be in my top 3. The simplicity and purity and angst and energy. The fuzzy live clip from Here are the Young Men puts chills down my spine.

whereas Pink Frost puts THE CHILLS down my spine (another great song Joy Division didn't write)

aerosmith, your post on "Passover" is greatness. I've bonded with other songs in a way that will probably determine my own vote ("She's Lost Control"? "Disorder"?). But thank you...

"Heart and Soul" is the one I whistle whilst traipsing about most often, so that. "Atrocity Exhibition" is the most interesting texturally, but its not exactly an earworm.

"Love Will Tear Us Apart" is the only good song by them I've ever heard, mostly because of that catchy keyboard riff. If only that tune had a better singer (and better mixed vocals), it would be a classic.

However, the Grace Jones version of "She's Lost Control" is better than any Joy Division song, but I won't vote for the inferior JD version, so "Love Will Tear Us Apart" it is.

Shadowplay - "I let them use you for their own ends"

Tuomas = fake Geir

Tuomas = fake
Tuomas = Geir
Geir = fake

I went for Decades. It's one of my favourite album closers ever.

Probably haven't heard JD in about 15 years but this is still a helluva difficult poll

That's Why!

Nah, I don't Remember Nothing in fact I remember them all like it was yesterday.

First time I heard Peel play Dead Souls is a memory frozen in time

Novelty for me. Ever since my mate flipped the 45 of Transmission all those years ago. JD guitar heroes.
Pleased to see it get some mentions above. I was never a huge fanboy and always felt like a freak for liking this

Followed by Disorder - people hear the Bedhead version of this. It sounds so beautifully resigned

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

the only songs that deserve to win would be Atmosphere and LWTUA-- the two songs that sound least like the rest of it.

All this atop a song that opens with "this is the crisis I knew had to come/destroying the balance I'd kept," an utter miracle of lyrical concision.

OTM (but you didn't vote for it!)

OTM about the conversational tone too. One of the things that first drew me in.

(I really like "Watching the reel as it draws to a close/Brutally taking its time" but I have to admit that the "time"/"time" rhyme in that verse always seemed a little weak to me.)

lol I meant to vote but the voting part of polls is the part I'm least interested in and I guess I finished writing the post and felt like I'd effectively cast the vote. if you see Passover please apologize to it for me

ironically, Passover is at your door, tapping its foot

i had no idea Disorder was so liked! glad that it is though.

Perfect top three. I think "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is a bit overrated. I loved it at the time, but the further away I get from it, the more it seems to me like the circumstances of its release account for a fair amount of that initial pull. (Which is somewhat tautological, I realize; if you know those circumstances, it's almost impossible to separate song from story.) But if you can put all that stuff aside, I just don't think it's as rhythmically/kinetically arresting as the top two, or as spooky and still as number three.

I'm not really feeling disorder these days as an opening track. Kind of too on the nose, Ian tipping his hand. Not crazy about the drums, either.

i've always much preferred the b-side take of 'love will tear us apart' (with a less lachrymose curtis vocal):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVoaIXma5BQ&list=FL-3hWbnd7_bfD1hw167IK-A&index=24

I call poll tampering. I voted for Insight!

xxp first couple of years i had unknown pleasures i mistakenly always played the second side first. the reissued vinyl i had didn't have the inner sleeve with the track listing, and the sides were only labeled outside and inside. i thought shes lost control was a cool and gutsy way to start an album.

similar to above, i only realised how hugely popular "disorder" was when i played it in a dj set by accident thinking i was going to play "she's lost control" and the whole place went nutsoid batshit mental to it.

Disorder posters available here:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/SheffieldProduct

I could make those at Staples and buy frames at Target for about $20 in total.

I still think of the "Heart and Soul" side as side 1 of Closer. Afaik, the LP's sides were never labelled "side 1" and "side 2", right?

Disorder? That's strange. People don't get past the first track or something? I'm surprised Love Will Tear Us Apart and Isolation placed so low.

That's not strange. As someone who's heard the entire JD catalogue many many times over the course of 20 years, I still voted Disorder. Why? It's the best!

I could make those at Staples and buy frames at Target for about $20 in total.

The frames are 10 bucks each at Michaels. The cheaper ones weren't as nice. The printing from staples would look like shit.

Oh lol, is that your storefront? Didn't mean to be an ass.

Yup. But to be pedantic, printing the posters at Staples would cost 10 bucks each, plus cost of frames, so that's already at least 30 bucks, and you don't get all the art school bullshit of "hand-printed" "linen paper" "distressed vintage type" "no two are the same" etc of mine.

I've had large-ish format stuff printed in full color at Staples before that looked perfect, btw. When I saw the close-up of the prints, though, I missed the detail. Those do look nice.

I should have voted A Means To an End instead of Atmosphere - it is poorly represented here. It's a monster.

Mastermind NOW!

got 10.

Missed it, have set the repeat to record.

Aren't you in Wales? It's on tomorrow night.

I call poll tampering. I voted for Insight!

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Friday, February 8, 2013 2:28 AM (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Atrocity Exhibition" also deserved better -- if not for the album version, then certainly for being among the high points of any live concert where it was played (in contrast to "Disorder," the live versions of which tend to underwhelm me)

I'm also kind of baffled by the high placement of "Dead Souls" -- a song I've never much cared for, though if pressed I will admit that it does in fact rock

Funny, I was just thinking that "Dead Souls" and "Atrocity Exhibition" are of a piece..

it's true they are, but in a way that makes the existence of "Dead Souls" redundant

have always thought of Dead Souls as an updated version of No Love Lost, with the long instrumental buildups.

it's not fucking disorder