Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark came out of Meols, Merseyside, where Andy McCluskey, who sang and played bass, and Paul Humphreys, on keyboards and vocals, had already run a band called the Id together from 1977 to 1978. OMD were the first two-man synthesizer band to play live in Britain, and they married a spare, experimental approach to pure pop melody. The critics weren't always kind, and the image was hardly cool, but the tunes won out.

"Electricity", a remake of an old Id song, was their debut single in 1979, and it's all bright, buzzing keyboards. "Enola Gay", on Organisation in 1980, is an anti-war song disguised as a bouncy pop hit, and it made them stars across Europe. Architecture & Morality, in 1981, brought three hit singles, and Dazzle Ships, in 1983, took the experimenting so far that it cost them some of their European audience, though it has since been reappraised.

On Junk Culture, in 1984, they went for a more radio-friendly sound, with "Tesla Girls" and "Locomotion", and it opened the door to America, where they were part of the MTV-driven Second British Invasion. "So in Love" and "Secret" came from Crush in 1985, and "If You Leave", from the 1986 film Pretty in Pink, became a hit. Some journalists called McCluskey and Humphreys the Lennon and McCartney of synth-pop.

Humphreys, Martin Cooper and drummer Malcolm Holmes left in 1989 to form the Listening Pool, leaving McCluskey on his own. He put together a new lineup and made Sugar Tax in 1991, with "Sailing on the Seven Seas" and "Pandora's Box", but OMD floundered as grunge and Britpop took over, and they called it quits in 1996. McCluskey went on to write and produce for Atomic Kitten. The original pair reformed in 2006, and with Cooper and drummer Stuart Kershaw on board from 2015, OMD have sold 40 million records worldwide.

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