"Love's Great Adventure" is a single released by

Ultravox Ultravox (earlier styled as Ultravox!) were a British new wave band, formed in London in April 1974 as Tiger Lily. Between 1980 and 1986, they scored seven Top Ten albums and seventeen Top 40 singles in the UK, the most successful of which was ...

on 12 October 1984. Having enjoyed massive radio airplay that autumn, the single became Ultravox's thirteenth Top 30 single in Britain, and was their last major hit in the UK, peaking at #12 in the

UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...

. The style of this single is different from any of their preceding ''

Lament A lament or lamentation is a passionate expression of grief, often in music, poetry, or song form. The grief is most often born of regret, or mourning. Laments can also be expressed in a verbal manner in which participants lament about somethin ...

'' singles, aiming for a more lightweight, pop-oriented approach.

Background

The music video was filmed in

Kenya ) , national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

and features the band members in a humorous parody of

Indiana Jones ''Indiana Jones'' is an American media franchise based on the adventures of Dr. Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., a fictional professor of archaeology, that began in 1981 with the film '' Raiders of the Lost Ark''. In 1984, a prequel, '' Th ...

, with

Midge Ure James Ure (born 10 October 1953) is a Scottish musician, singer-songwriter and record producer. His stage name, Midge, is a phonetic reversal of Jim, the diminutive form of his actual name. Ure enjoyed particular success in the 1970s and 1980s ...

being chased across deserts and forests by a ruthless treasure hunter. Midge Ure stated in his autobiography, ''If I Was'', that the aim of the single and its video was to promote Ultravox as having a sense of humour, away from the seriousness of their previous releases. Also in the video is Ure's future wife

Annabel Giles Annabel Claire Giles (born 20 May 1959) is a British former television and radio presenter. She currently works as a counsellor and psychotherapist, and has also worked as a model, actress and novelist. Early life and career Giles was born in ...

. The music in the video stops halfway through where a seemingly exhausted Midge Ure, tired from minutes of endless running around has to sit down for a moment and take a breather. He rests for a moment then takes a breath before standing up recovered and continuing with the song at which point the music starts up once again. The song, based on a riff for a

Levi's Levi Strauss & Co. () is an American clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's () brand of denim jeans. It was founded in May 1853 when German-Jewish immigrant Levi Strauss moved from Buttenheim, Bavaria, to San Francisco, California, to o ...

jeans commercial which was not taken up by the company, was not released on a studio album, instead appearing on their 1984 compilation album '' The Collection''. Billy Currie said 1984: ''"We wanted to do something different, to get out of the way singles that are taken from an album tend to sound the same as each other. You know, when any band puts out several singles from the same album, they might appear to be very different in some ways, but because they were all recorded at the same time, they have the same feel to them. We wanted to get away from that - do a one-off single totally separate from any album. The recording was a lot more immediate than 'Lament'. We decided not to go into the studio and spend a long time doing it, because things can become really sluggish when you're doing albums. For the single there was plenty of momentum going, and the momentum thing is important: having done the single like that, I'd now like to do an album in the same way - do it with just a couple of days' rehearsals, or none at all, which was what we did for the single."'' Warren Cann said 1984: ''"It's in threes, and it's got a very up, happy melody, which is why we decided to persevere with it in the first place. We'd tried things in that time signature before, but they'd always sounded contrived, but this one doesn't. There's no real technical trickery in making it, it's the strength of the song that carries it through."''

In popular culture

An episode of the BBC series ''

Inside No. 9 ''Inside No. 9'' is a British black comedy anthology television programme that first aired in 2014. It is written by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton and produced by the BBC. Each 30-minute episode is a self-contained story with new charact ...

'', also called "Love's Great Adventure", used this song as its closing theme.

Track listing

7" version

# "Love's Great Adventure" – 3:04 - (

Cross A cross is a geometrical figure consisting of two intersecting lines or bars, usually perpendicular to each other. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally. A cross of oblique lines, in the shape of the Latin letter X, is termed a sa ...

, Ure) # "White China (Live June 84 at

Hammersmith Odeon The Hammersmith Apollo, currently called the Eventim Apollo for sponsorship reasons, and formerly known as the Hammersmith Odeon, is a live entertainment performance venue, originally built as a cinema called the Gaumont Palace. Located in Ha ...

)" – 3:43 - (music: Cross,

Cann Cann may refer to: *Cann (surname), a list of people with the name *Cann River, a river of Victoria, Australia *Cann, Dorset, a village in England *Edward du Cann, British businessman and politician *Claire and Antoinette Cann pianists, known as t ...

, Currie - lyrics: Ure)

12" version

# "Love's Great Adventure (Extended Version)" – 5:40 # "White China (Live June 84 at Hammersmith Odeon)" – 3:43 # "Man of Two Worlds (Instrumental)" – 4:32 - (music: Currie, Cann, Cross, Ure - lyrics: Ure)

References

{{authority control Ultravox songs 1984 singles Songs written by Midge Ure Songs written by Chris Cross Songs written by Billy Currie Songs written by Warren Cann 1984 songs Chrysalis Records singles