This Wreckage

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"This Wreckage"
ThisWreckage.jpg
Single by Gary Numan
from the album Telekon
B-side "Photograph"
Released12 December 1980 [1]
RecordedRock City Studios, Shepperton, 1980
Genre Pop rock [2]
Length5:26
Label Beggars Banquet
BEG 50
Songwriter(s) Gary Numan
Producer(s) Gary Numan
Gary Numan singles chronology
"I Die: You Die"
(1980)
"This Wreckage"
(1980)
"Stormtrooper in Drag"
(1981)

"This Wreckage" is a song written and performed by Gary Numan. It was featured as the opening track on his 1980 LP Telekon . [3]

Following two non-album singles, "We Are Glass" and "I Die: You Die", "This Wreckage" was the only single lifted from Telekon . Released in December 1980 it reached No. 20 on the UK Singles Chart. Numan later admitted that, regardless of its merits as a song, it was a "bloody stupid single". [4] The song was later described as "possibly the strangest Top 20 hit of all time", a fore-runner of "the slightly one-note anti-religious goth-industrial music" Numan would favour later in his career. [5]

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References

  1. "Music Week" (PDF). p. 26.
  2. Evans, Richard (August 6, 2024). "1980.3". Listening to the Music the Machines Make: Inventing Electronic Pop 1978-1983. Omnibus Press. p. 234. ISBN   978-1-915841-45-2.
  3. Conte, Frank (9 October 1980). "Reviews: Gary Numen - Telekon". The Boston Globe . p. 82. Retrieved 15 November 2023.
  4. Stephen Webbon & Gary Numan (1985). "Complete Gary Numan UK Discography". Record Collector (December 1985, No. 76): p.15
  5. McNamee, David (17 November 2008). "It Started With A Mix: One Side Of A C90 From Synth Pop Pioneer Gary Numan". The Quietus. Retrieved 16 November 2023.