I don't much like football. Never have done really. Kicking a ball around the park is one thing, but the level of fanaticism otherwise rational people can display in supporting 'their' team is not something I've never been totally sold on. Mystifying really. But as I've said before, if there's one thing that irritates more than football on the TV it's football in the charts. As far as I'm concerned, there's more than enough of the stuff elsewhere without it clogging all over the medium I love with some out of tune, terrace friendly singalong (which is why it was fairly easy for me to deal with the previous entry we've met in this niche genre).*But - what a dilemma; I do like New Order. In fact, in 1990 I loved them to distraction, and for good reason - as a band, they were entering the new decade on the jetstream of an unbroken sequence of highly impressive album and single releases that served as a quality benchmark within the late eighties 'indie' scene. In fact, 'World In Motion' itself almost picks up where the previous year's loved up and blissed out 'Technique' album had left off. Almost, but not quite; whilst 'Technique' was an ecstasy fuelled, sun kissed rush of hedonism, 'World In Motion' and its leaden "express yourself' chanting sounds altogether more earthbound and boozy in comparison, which given its context is kind of understandable.
Of course, it's still defiantly a New Order track, there's no doubt about that - the drum sequence/bass duels are unmistakeably the work of only one band, and Sumner's vocal intones the lyric with the same dispassion as he did on those perfect kisses and true faiths. "You can't be wrong, when something's good it's never gone": if the footie connection wasn't set out up front then a casual listener would be hard pressed to make the link until John Barnes starts up his tragi-comic rapping with the same grace and style he exhibited whenever he pulled on an England shirt.**
Yet without that link it's also weak New Order song, an identikit offering jerry built on the back of TV theme music written by the band's 'Other Two' contingent some two years previously. It's precisely that World Cup link that gives it the extra dimension it needed to appeal (which I'm happy to admit I don't really 'get') to its intended auidence and helped generate a lasting 'all together' sexiness in football presentation within and without the media that left the violence scarred eighties behind. Or perhaps it generated a new one too - hindsight appreciation suggests that 'World In Motion' kickstarted the early nineties Technicolor post politically correct era of the Loaded reading, lager swilling 'new lad' with Oasis just around the corner.
But as one era began, another ended; 'World In Motion' would be New Order's last release on the iconic Factory label and it would be three years until they released anything else. And what did follow later rarely scaled the heights of old. True, it remains a pleasure to see the words 'New Order' at the top of the charts, but it carries a whiff of the 'beginning of the end' in that I tend to view the placing as honorary, one based on a one-off fan base gee'd up by patriotic fervour rather than it being there on its own merits. Or to put it another way, it's not a song for me.
* That's not to say I dislike all football songs: I Ludicrous: 'Bring On The Substitute', Half Man Half Biscuit: 'The Referee's Alphabet' will forever and a day make me smile and I'll always have a soft spot for those that celebrate through satire rather than regional jingoism
** This comment was provided by someone apparently more knowledgeable than myself. I can say that I prefer it to Madonna's 'Vogue' 'rap' though.
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