“The Perfect Kiss” by New Order

"The Perfect Kiss" hit the shops on Factory in May 1985, New Order's ninth single and the first of theirs to turn up on a studio album as well, in this case Low-Life. Factory, being Factory, gave the vinyl the catalogue number FAC 123 and the video the mirror image, FAC 321. The band cut it at Britannia Row Studios in London and produced it themselves, with Michael Johnson engineering, and they rushed it: written, recorded and mixed without sleep before they flew out to tour Australia.

You can hear the adrenaline. The beat ticks like a pulse gone feverish, the synths shimmer and burble, a high, singing bass line climbs over the top as a second melody, and the whole thing keeps building on the dance floor long after most synth-pop records would have called it a night. Singer and guitarist Bernard Sumner circles love and death as if they were the same errand. Gillian Gilbert, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and Sumner share the writing credit.

Ask him what it means and he'll shrug: he told GQ he hasn't a clue. The line he is best known for came out of a trip to America, where a man showed the band the guns he kept under his bed before taking them out for a thoroughly good night. It came between "Murder" and "Sub-Culture" in the singles run.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.