I know I’ve been bad to you. I promised, really and truly promised, to write every day but here I am making my first post in almost three weeks. It won’t happy again baby, please don’t be mad.
I finally got around to exploring Joy Division. Until now, I figured I had enough comiseration music to satisfy me. With the release of Control, the new film based on Ian Curtis’s life, along with all the press the album reissues are getting, I decided to dive in. However, I bought the albums online at 3 AM and decided not to listen to them yet. A fresh listen deserves a fresh, non-drowsy mind. Not ready to sleep though, I hopped from bio to bio, compiling the requisite knowledge for informed listening later. Recognizing the name New Order (composed of the surviving members of Joy Division) I decided to give a listen. With a double-click on “Bizarre Love Triangle” I was whisked to my bedroom circa 1992.
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New Order – Bizarre Love Triangle
This was the song playing in one of my first memories of exploring the radio. That is, one of the first bursts of magic I stumbled upon while listening to something other than the tapes my mom played in the car. It might be the first song that I spent time trying to understand the lyrics.
Every time I see you falling
I get down on my knees and pray
I’m waiting for that final moment
You’ll say the words that I can’t say
My eight-year-old brain struggled to decode the meaning. “Is this guy so charming that the woman he’s singing to can’t help falling in love with him? Is he praying that she’ll confess her love because he’s incapable of saying so himself?” Usually, I came to the conclusion that he was praying she would not confess her love, because he did not love her. That’s why he had to pray, pray that her feelings would miraculously change and that she’d be the one to end the relationship. Where I picked up the life experience to contemplate such possibilities is unknown, but my guess is The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Among all the iterations, though, the presence of a third person in the song never crossed my mind. But there it is right in the title, “Bizarre Love Triangle.” Even with this new piece of evidence (not to mention 16 more years of wisdom) I don’t have a definitive understanding of this song. Not even Bernard Sumner seems to have a handle on the situation. Later in the song he sings:
Everyday my confusion grows
…I’m not sure what this could mean
And I don’t expect I ever will.