Architecture And Morality reached No. 3 in the UK charts and No. 1 in Belgium
and Holland.
The New Stone Age was a radical departure from what people would expect from OMD
with its use of guitars. The band were hoping people would take the record back
to shops convinced it wasn't OMD!
She's Leaving, had a troubled history: the song had been written in January
1981 - and tried out on tour in Canada and France. But the band's attempts to
record it resulted in them getting bored very quickly. It was only when they discovered
an old version recorded at The Gramophone Suite that they tried again. Recording
at The Manor, they slowed it down and made it a bit more simple. This song was
suggested as the fourth release by DinDisc but the band disagreed, concerned that
they were exploiting the album.
Souvenir was the first single released from the album and is the first OMD
single that features Paul Humphreys on lead vocals.
Sealand takes its title from an RAF base on the Wirral. Although the song isn't
about the location itself, Andy was struck by the visual strength of the name
which seemed to conjure up a striking image of a place between the land and the
sea.
Joan Of Arc was the second single from the album.
Joan Of Arc (Maid Of Orleans) was the third single from the album.
Architecture And Morality. "We wrote the whole thing in the Manor
Studio in three days. We decided to call it Architecture And Morality and then
proceeded to throw onto tape everything 'architectural' and 'moral' that we could
think of. Over the three days we gradually added and subtracted all manner of
sounds until we had made something from all the noises" OMD (News Letter
1981)
The band had written a song called Georgia for the album but decided they weren't
happy with the result and decided to shelf the song. They were happy with the
title however and wrote a new song that they decided to name Georgia. The original
Georgia was dusted down in 1988 and renamed Gravity Never Failed which featured
as a B-Side to Dreaming.
The Beginning And The End was an old song dating from Andy and Paul's VCLXI
days. Back then, the band had problems in getting it to sound right and they remarked
in an issue of the OMD Newsletter that the version used on the album was "quite
successful" but that perhaps they would do it again differently in the
future.
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