The Best of OMD

OMD were a very busy band in the 1980s, releasing hit after hit after hit, beginning in 1979 with "Electricity" which secured a place on the top 100 list. Shortly after the release of their self-titled debut album, OMD enjoyed greater success with "Maid of Orleans" and "Enola Gay" while "Souvenir" became their biggest hit yet, peaking at #3 on the UK charts.

In America, OMD found moderate success with "So in Love" and the ballad "If You Leave" which was included on the Pretty In Pink soundtrack. The latter track is also featured on a new commercial, so listen out for it.

Music lovers should have this CD in their collection. It really is one of the best albums you'll ever hear. At first you may find Andy McClusky's vocals a bit unbearable, but I recommend this gem nevertheless. Paul Humphreys, Andy McClusky, Martin Cooper and Malcolm Holmes are going to reform this year, so I'm looking very forward to a DVD release.


Representative of the highs and lows   November 14, 2005
 8 out of 11 found this review helpful

In many reviews of the ‘best of OMD’ people have charted the growing ‘sophistication’ of their music, from the debut to ‘Pacific Age’ Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark refined their technique, with the odd misstep like ‘Dazzle Ships’, set aside clichéd politics and kraftwerk-ian ideals in favour of tight melody and pop logic. Admittedly from one point of view this is true. ‘Best of OMD’ contains some great pop. Rarely has a best of summarised a groups rise and fall, not only musically but in terms of popularity. In their early years they found success producing new wave electronics and experimental sounds capes, but ironically as the group sort commercialism, interest (in the UK) vanished.

Tracks 1 to 10 and 16 are singles from OMD’s first 5 albums. ‘Electricity’ is a new wave staple, a bouncy, catchy classic. ‘Enola Gay’ is even better; a great memorable pop song, with a melody that is impossible to forget, ‘Joan of Arc’ and ‘Telegraph’ both continue in a similar vein. In between the unabashed pop music are songs that are grander and reflective. ‘Maid of Orleans’ especially is a brilliant heartbreaking masterpiece, and one of the most un-formulaic songs ever to become a hit.

‘Tesla Girls’, ‘Locomotion’ and ‘Talking Loud and Clear’ are from OMD’s fifth and as it would turn out, last great album ‘Junk Culture’, these are all in essence typical OMD but with a commercial and upbeat take on their sound. For some reason ‘Genetic Engineering’ from 1983’s ‘Dazzle Ships’ is out of place it’s possibly the oddest single of their career and taken in context with tracks 1-10 it fits nicely. Also it’s a shame that ‘Never Turn Away’ isn’t here, it was the final single from ‘Junk Culture’.

After Junk Culture OMD chose to go all out and make lightweight bubbly pop. Tracks 11 onwards feature OMD’s commercial side. ‘So in Love’ and ‘Secret’ are passable pop songs. The rest is practically un-listenable, full of jarring synths where gorgeous choir sounds once appeared, Andy McCluskey’s voice once passionate if a bit screechy now wobbles all over the place, this is most painful on ‘If You Leave’, apparently a big hit in the USA.

It’s really sad, because without the later half, this Cd would have sat well next to New Order’s Substance or Depeche Mode’s singles albums. Early OMD did pop and alternative music brilliantly, but dip into any of the first 5 albums and you’ll hear their real legacy, music that is as experimental and avant-garde as Neu! Kraftwerk, Bowie, Eno or Joy Division, and really worth seeking out.

‘Best of OMD’ is the best career retrospective available, the ‘OMD singles’ isn’t really worth your time since it drops much of the early material in favour of their 90s output, which to be blunt isn’t up to much. If you’re new to OMD this is a good overview or you’ll at least get a good idea which period you enjoy.


Influential yet underappreciated music   November 20, 2004
 6 out of 10 found this review helpful

I've always looked upon The Best of OMD as the most disposable CD in my collection, so I thought it would be fun to review it, as a change of pace if nothing else. I can't begin to say how many years it had been since I listened to this album. It's actually a bit serendipitous, as just recently I've begun trying to get a handle on this whole "synthpop" thing, never remembering I had a musical retrospective of one of the more influential synthpop groups close at hand all the while. I still can't tell you exactly what synthpop is, at its simplest, it's pop music played primarily on synthesizers. To me, though, synthpop primarily translates to musical memories of the 1980s, and I've never made a secret of my love for all things 80s, especially the music.

Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark had a long and successful career, but they achieved mega-success with only one song. If You Leave, from the soundtrack of that seminal 80s film Pretty in Pink, towers over the musical landscape of the 1980s. If I had to pick one tune that represented the decade of my youth, I would probably choose If You Leave. I'm still perplexed why the song never rose above #4 on the US charts. I originally bought this CD because of that one awesome song, and this probably explains why I didn't really "get" this music at the time, especially since a majority of the tracks date back to the group's earlier years. OMD first appeared on the music scene in 1979 with the song Electricity, a catchy but rather ephemeral track that managed to win them a recording contract. Their early recordings are hard for me to classify; I believe Enola Gay made the top ten in the UK in 1980, but this song always seems to hang around in my head to the point of being annoying after I listen to it. Tracks such as Joan of Arc and Maid of Orleans demonstrate the growing musical maturity of the group, though.

OMD began to hit their stride with the release of the album Junk Culture in 1984. Tesla Girls, in particular, is a much tighter, certainly much more energetic song from the somewhat experimental products that had come before. This song almost demands to be danced to (but not by me, of course) and had what earlier tracks did not - pop appeal. Locomotion has a more pop-oriented sound, as well, but its good points are all but nullified by the constant repetition of a certain silly phrase. Talking Loud and Clear, a third track from Junk Culture, also suffers from repetition and a stultifying level of musical restraint. The group's pop-oriented synthpop sound continued with the album Crush in 1985, with OMD finally finding significant success in America with the single So in Love. Secret taps into the kind of teenaged lovesickness that fueled much of the best of 80s music; back then, a crush could actually be an innocent albeit heart-wrenching thing that basically defined adolescence. For the first time, OMD was beginning to sound (to me, anyway) like the group that would go on to record the era-defining song If You Leave.

A defining sense of melancholy seemed to characterize all of OMD's music, from weighty songs such as Forever Live and Die to pop-oriented tracks such as the excellent Dreaming. This collection's final two tracks, 12" versions of We Love You and La Femme Accident, close things out with great energy, but the songs you take away from this album are those more poignant offerings from the mid-80s, great tracks such as So in Love and If You Leave. Listening to this album now, I think I appreciate the music much more than I did all those years ago. OMD may not have hit the charts all that often, but theirs is a typically 80s sound that helped define the decade and did much to shape the development of synthpop. Needless to say, I am no longer inclined to look upon this CD as in any way disposable.