Listening out for a counter-narrative to everything they heard blaring from UK radios, they found what they were after in experimental German music. The popular music of the 1970s as OMD saw it had become senseless and overblown with uninventive guitar-work, mythological narratives (looking at you, prog-rock), and financial barriers to entry. Taking a detour from the typical source of lyrical inspiration, love, and human experience, OMD lifted their songs from engineering handbooks, historical stories, and wartime politics. Synthesizing intellectual lyrics with popular sensibilities, “Enola Gay” reflects bandmates Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys’ efforts to bring the cerebral and often, commonplace, into the mainstream. While the last 40 years have seen OMD produce multiple charting records, break into America with Pretty in Pink‘s “If You Leave”, and more recently, record the critically acclaimed The Punishment of Luxury, it’s “Enola Gay” that most honestly captures the band’s triumphant legacy. “Enola Gay”, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s (OMD’s) wonderfully indulgent synthpop classic named after the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, has just turned 40.
