True Faith (song)
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"True Faith" is a song by New Order, co-written and co-produced by the band and
Stephen Hague Stephen Hague (born 1960) is an American record producer most active with various British acts since the 1980s. Early life Hague was born in Portland, Maine in 1960. Early career Hague started his musical career in the mid-1970s as a session ...
. It was the first New Order single since their debut "
Ceremony A ceremony (, ) is a unified ritualistic event with a purpose, usually consisting of a number of artistic components, performed on a special occasion. The word may be of Etruscan origin, via the Latin '' caerimonia''. Church and civil (secular) ...
" to be issued in the UK as two separate 12" singles. The second 12" single features two remixes of "True Faith" by
Shep Pettibone Robert "Shep" Pettibone (born 10 July 1959) is an American record producer, remixer, songwriter and club DJ, one of the most prolific of the 1980s. Career Shep Pettibone surfaced after his work with Arthur Baker on Afrika Bambaataa & the Jazz ...
. Both versions of the 12" (and also the edited 7") include the song " 1963". "True Faith" is one of New Order's most popular songs. The single peaked at No. 4 in the United Kingdom on its original release in 1987. "True Faith" became New Order's first single to chart in the Hot 100 and would also go on to be a top 40 hit in the United States, peaking at No. 32. A "True Faith" remix 12" single and CD single were released in 1994, and another "True Faith" remix 12" single and CD single were released in 2001. The 1994 remix charted in the UK at No. 9.


Original releases

New Order wrote and recorded "True Faith" and "1963" during a 10-day studio session with producer Stephen Hague. The two songs were written as new material for New Order's first singles compilation album, '' Substance 1987''. After the two songs were recorded, the band's US management decided that "True Faith" was the stronger track and would be released as the new single, with "1963" as the B-side ("1963" was remixed and issued as a single in its own right in 1994). "That wasn't really a happy period in New Order's life," recalled Peter Hook. "Let's just say it was a bit of a battle for me to get on there at all, apart from in the sense of helping write the song. Musically, we were moving more towards straight dance and I was keen on keeping the New Order I'd known and loved. I eventually managed to get my bass on the original version. But, of course, the first thing any remixers do is take off my bass and put their own on. I sometimes feel like attaching a note saying, How about keeping the bass?" While never appearing on an original album, it was included on most of the band's "best of" collections (''Substance 1987'', ''The Best of New Order'', ''Retro'', ''International'', ''Singles'' and ''Total''). The first public performance of the song took place at the 1987 Glastonbury Festival; this version appears on the group's ''
BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert ''BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert'' is a series of recordings of the BBC Radio 1 concert series ''BBC Radio 1 Live''. The albums are licensed to Windsong International. Albums * '' BBC Radio 1 Live: Steve Hillage Live in Concert'' * ''BBC Radio 1 ...
'' album. The original 7" version of the song did not appear on any album until 2011's '' Total: From Joy Division to New Order''.


Composition

The song is composed in the key of D minor with an outro in
G major G major (or the key of G) is a major scale based on G, with the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Its key signature has one sharp. Its relative minor is E minor and its parallel minor is G minor. The G major scale is: Notable composi ...
. As is the case for many New Order songs of this period, the words in the title do not appear anywhere in the lyrics. The original lyrics included a verse that read "Now that we've grown up together/They're all taking drugs with me". Hague convinced Sumner to change the latter line to "They're afraid of what they see" because he was worried that otherwise it would not get played on the radio. When performing the song live, the band have usually used the original line. During a live performance in 1993 in
Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling ...
, Sumner replaced the first lines of the second verse with the lyrics "When I was a very small boy,
Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Over a ...
played with me. Now that we've grown up together, he's playing with my willy." This was a topical reference to the allegations of sexual abuse against the singer.


Technical details

"True Faith" was recorded at Advision Studio One, with production by New Order and Stephen Hague and was engineered by David Jacob. According to Hague, the studio featured "...a first generation SSL board and big old
UREI United Recording Electronics Industries (UREI) was a manufacturer of recording, mixing and audio signal processing hardware for the professional recording studio, live sound and broadcasting fields. History Bill Putnam Sr. founded Universal ...
Time Align monitors. "True Faith" was created using a wide range of electronic musical equipment. According to an interview in ''
Sound on Sound ''Sound on Sound'' is an independently owned monthly music technology magazine published by SOS Publications Group, based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. The magazine includes product tests of electronic musical performance and recording devices, ...
'' by Richard Buskin, Hague notes that New Order provided a Yamaha QX 1, an Octave Voyetra 8
polyphonic synthesizer Polyphony is a property of musical instruments that means that they can play multiple independent melody lines simultaneously. Instruments featuring polyphony are said to be polyphonic. Instruments that are not capable of polyphony are monophoni ...
, a Yamaha DX 5 and an
Akai S900 The Akai S900 is a 12-bit sampler, with a variable sample rate from 7.5 kHz through to 40 kHz. It was common in recording studios until it was superseded two years later by the S1000. An expanded version, the Akai S950, was released in 1988 al ...
sampler, while he provided an
E-mu Emulator II The Emulator is a series of digital sampling synthesizers using floppy disk storage, manufactured by E-mu Systems from 1981 until 2002. Though not the first commercial sampler, the Emulator was among the first to find wide use among ordinary m ...
and an E-mu SP12.


Critical reception

In 2013, ''
Stereogum ''Stereogum'' is a daily Internet publication that focuses on music news, reviews, interviews, and commentary. The site was created in January 2002 by Scott Lapatine. ''Stereogum'' was one of the first MP3 blogs and has received several award ...
'' ranked "True Faith" number four on their list of the 10 greatest New Order songs, and in 2021, ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' ranked the song number one on their list of the 30 greatest New Order songs.


Music video

The release of "True Faith" was accompanied by a surreal
music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...
directed and choreographed by
Philippe Decouflé Philippe Decouflé (born October 22, 1961) is a French choreographer, dancer, mime artist, and theatre director.
and produced by
Michael H. Shamberg Michael H. Shamberg (October 27, 1952Shamberg Michael H.
Retrieved 2014-11-29. – November 1, 2014) was an American ...
. The opening sequence, showing two men slapping each other, is a reference to
Marina Abramović Marina Abramović ( sr-Cyrl, Марина Абрамовић, ; born November 30, 1946) is a Serbian conceptual and performance artist. Her work explores body art, endurance art, feminist art, the relationship between the performer and audi ...
and
Ulay Frank Uwe Laysiepen (; 30 November 1943 – 2 March 2020), known professionally as Ulay, was a German artist based in Amsterdam and Ljubljana, who received international recognition for his Polaroid art and collaborative performance art with long ...
's video performance ''Light/ Dark'' shot in 1977. Costumed dancers then leap about, fight and slap each other in time to the music, while a person in dark green makeup emerges from an upside-down boxer's speed bag and hand signs the lyrics (in LSF). Other parts of the video were inspired by
Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...
artist
Oskar Schlemmer Oskar Schlemmer (4 September 1888 – 13 April 1943) was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school. In 1923, he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working at the w ...
's
Triadisches Ballett ''Triadisches Ballett'' (Triadic Ballet) is a ballet developed by Oskar Schlemmer. The ballet became the most widely performed avant-garde artistic dance and while Schlemmer was at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1929, the ballet toured, helping to spre ...
. The video has often been voted amongst the best music videos of its year. Sky Television's channel ''
The Amp The AMP was a youth center and music venue in Minot, North Dakota, United States. Established in October 2003 by Billy Luetzen, the AMP provided a place for local youth to hang out, and on most weekends staged a concert. Generally concerts had ...
'', for instance, has it rated as the best video of 1987, '' Smash Hits'' magazine's readers rated it as the 3rd best video of 1987 and it won the
British Video of the Year The Brit Award for British Video of the Year was an award given by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), an organisation which represents record companies and artists in the United Kingdom. The accolade is presented at the Brit Awards, an annua ...
in 1988. The overall tonality, themes and various elements from the video re-occurred in Decouflé's scenography and choreography for the inauguration ceremonies of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville. The video was slightly modified for the 1994 re-release, featuring black-and-white clips of females inserted into the later parts of the video.


Track listing


1987 release


True Faith-94 release


Charts


Original version


Weekly charts

1Remix


Year-end charts


"True Faith-94"


Certifications


Cover versions


George Michael version

English singer George Michael covered "True Faith" in 2011 in support of the charity fund
Comic Relief Comic relief is the inclusion of a humorous character, scene, or witty dialogue in an otherwise serious work, often to relieve tension. Definition Comic relief usually means a releasing of emotional or other tension resulting from a comic epis ...
. Throughout the song, Michael's vocals are electronically masked using a
vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''voice'' and ''encoder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder was ...
, which garnered mixed reactions. In response, he joked: "People like to make exceptions for me." Peaking at no. 27 on the UK Singles Chart, the song made its television debut on
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, as one of five music videos recorded for
Red Nose Day 2011 ''Red Nose Day 2011'' was a fundraising event organised by Comic Relief. There was a live telethon broadcast on BBC One and BBC Two from the evening of 18 March 2011 to early the following morning as well as a number of run-up events. The theme ...
.


Lotte Kestner / ''The Last of Us Part II'' version

The trailer for the 2020 action-adventure video game ''
The Last of Us Part II ''The Last of Us Part II'' is a 2020 action-adventure game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4. Set five years after ''The Last of Us'' (2013), the game focuses on two playable chara ...
'' featured the character
Ellie Ellie, or Elly, is a given name, usually feminine. The name stands on its own or can be a shortened form of any of the numerous female names beginning with the syllable El-, in particular Eleanor or Elizabeth and Elvira. It can also be a short ...
performing an acoustic rendition of the song, which bore a striking resemblance to a 2011 cover by
Lotte Kestner Anna-Lynne Williams (born February 8, 1978), better known by the stage name Lotte Kestner, is an American singer and songwriter. She started her musical career as vocalist for the indie rock band Trespassers William in 1997, and adopted the Lotte ...
. When Kestner revealed that she had not been credited for her cover of the song being featured, the game's director
Neil Druckmann Neil Druckmann ( he, ניל דרוקמן; born December 5, 1978) is an Israeli-American writer, creative director, designer, and programmer who has been co-president (alongside Evan Wells) of the video game developer Naughty Dog since 2020. He ...
apologized and blamed it on an oversight. The game's publisher
Sony Interactive Entertainment Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), formerly known as Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), is a multinational video game industry, video game and digital entertainment company wholly owned by multinational conglomerate Sony. The SIE Group is ma ...
looked into the matter, and Kestner was subsequently credited on promotional materials.


References


External links

* {{Authority control 1987 songs 1987 singles 1994 singles Factory Records singles London Records singles BBC Records singles New Order (band) songs Song recordings produced by Stephen Hague Songs about drugs Songs written by Bernard Sumner Songs written by Gillian Gilbert Songs written by Peter Hook Songs written by Stephen Hague Songs written by Stephen Morris (musician) George Michael songs Song recordings produced by George Michael UK Independent Singles Chart number-one singles