KRAFTWERK – "The Model"/"Computer Love"

As a double A-Side, this was a combination of the contemporary – 1981’s “Computer Love”, and the recent vintage – 1978’s “The Model”.

The Model’s real interest is as a showcase, a model even, of the repetitive but melodic 2 or 3 note synth chorus hook. The idea that the chorus of a pop song could work instrumentally, without the need for a vocal or lyrical hook, was a real breakthrough in creating the electropop/new romantic scene that by early 1982 dominated the UK pop landscape.

The Model’s instrumental synth figure can be traced in “Love Action”, “Open Your Heart”, “Just Can’t Get Enough”, “Souvenir”, “Enola Gay”, “Messages”, “Cars” and numerous other synth-pop hits of the 79-81 period spanning “Man Machine” and “Computer World”.

It seemed fitting that at the height of Kraftwerk’s influence, this seminal track from nearly 4 years earlier should see them at the peak of a Top Ten singles chart containing the no-less seminal “Being Boiled” and OMD’s remarkable “Maid of Orleans”.

Tom – who were the meddling DJs? I can’t recall who was championing this at the time.

I do remember the record’s bizarre chart trajectory that saw it fall from 2 to 3, before climbing up to Number 1, a pattern, as has been eluded to several times on Popular, due in no small part to a brief experiment with compiling the chart at a different time, the upshot of which was to show just how influential “Top of the Pops” could be on a record’s chart-placing.

In effect, during January and February 1982 an act’s performance on TOTP (or in the case of Kraftwerk, the showing of the video) would not be reflected in its chart placing until two week’s hence.

Haircut 100 must have worried when “Love Plus One” entered at 36, they appeared on TOTP, and the following Tuesday they were at – Number 36 still! Only to leap up to Number 12 the week after.

Soft Cell’s “Say Hello Wave Goodbye” was another affected by this phenomenon. Marc’s appearance at the Pink Flamingo only truly reflected in it’s chart showing a fortnight later, when it jumped from 18 to 3, having been at 20 when the video was first aired.

Seeing as how I fell in love with someone on the computer via ye olde internet, I can’t give this single less than 10, and if its stepson had gotten to number one I’d be inclined to give it a 10 as well, just ’cause. (I’m not sure if the latter’s video is in black & white as an homage, or what.)

I believe the German language version is somewhat less dispassionate.

“She goes to nightclubs drinking SEKT?? KORRECT!!”

(trans)

I actually bought “Computer Love” and it flopped. “Krautwerk” then flipped it and it suddenly dawned on me that “The Model” had been hiding on the other side. To be perfectly frank, I wouldn’t have gone near either of ’em if it hadn’t been for the fact that I dug “Autobahn”.

Arbeit Macht Frei! Nicht War?

More than any other synthpop hit of the time, this was a source of fascination to the boy Billy. Nothing else ever seemed quite so other, to leap so far into a different, electronic, perception of the world. The tremendous stateliness and order of the riff was balanced by the measured, calm, nature of the foreign-sounding vocals. This seemed to make the story told much clearer than other pop to me; He saw the model in a magazine and wants to see her again: What could follow more logically than that?

As a grown man I respond in the same way to the form of the thing, but it takes a few years of lived adult experience to really get the intense poignaincy of Kraftwerk – The awareness that the sense of order, harmony and balance in the music and the world evoked is hard to attain apart from experienced as fleeting epithanies of grace, and that life is more often a disspiriting mess. There’s often a kindliness and childlike gentleness to Kraftwerk, as opposed to the visionary harshness which you might expect if you’d only read descriptions of them.

I can’t add much to Tom’s writing about what is great about ‘Computer Love’. Being ahead of your time doesn’t always equate to making great art, but it is just astonishing how prophetic that album is, in theme and arrangement a document of the way we live now, and the way which nobody lived in 1981.

(For evidence of how much people were buying this for ‘The Model’ and not ‘Computer Love’, consider the chart placing of ‘Pocket Calculator’, the first single off ‘Computer World’ – a less than earthshaking #39)

9 – I don’t really recall seeing or hearing Kraftwerk until The Mix in 1991 and by then they seemed relatively antiquated and frankly quite naff

^^This is pretty much my exact feelings re: Kraftwerk (except make the year 2002 or 2003). I can hear how they’re hugely important &c, especially to music I now love, but the production just seems thin and dated to ears attuned to 00s electronic music. Not their fault of course* but it just means I never feel like listening to them.

*although having said that, I don’t feel the same way about other electronic producers from around this time or before – Moroder, Jam & Lewis etc – so maybe it is their fault!

Re 8: Yeah, hearing Kraftwerk actually do a COMEDY VOICE was a major “WTF” moment for me!

My first contact with Kraftwerk was in the late 80’s. I borrowed copied C64 games from a friend in order to make even more copies of them, and some of these games were recorded on tapes that had previously contained Kraftwerk songs.

The word “Kraftwerk” sounded slightly frightening and I assumed it to be some kind of German metal. A few years later, The Mix was released and i realised that they were something else entirely.

“Thin” or “dated” are words I would never use to describe Kraftwerk’s music. “Minimalist” and “timeless” are a much better fit. I assume that they sound just as out of place now as they did in 1982, and that they will sound just as out of place in 30 or 50 years’ time. The comparison between Kraftwerk and minimalist, modernist abstract art might be tired and worn-out but is nonetheless apt. It’s the kind of stuff that will prompt people to say “This is not REAL art, it doesn’t require any talent, anyone could have done that” – but “anyone” didn’t.

Listening to the German and English language versions of Kraftwerk songs are actually quite different experiences. When singing in German, Ralf Hütter sounds self-assured and sometimes even sneery (as commented on by Mark G, #8), but the English version often comes across as frail and insecure, or at times almost comical. “The Model” might be the most obvious example. Sometimes I prefer the German version, sometimes the English one – it differs from song to song.

#16:

For years, I thought it was their “Benny Hill” moment, however…

I read in Wolfgang Flur’s autobiog that it was meant to represent the voice of the club owner that KW frequented.

Basically the guy would meet them at the door and shout “My friends! Celebrating? YES! And your order is… (Champagne) SEKT? KORRRRECT!!”

(I can’t recall if it’s actually the club owner on the record or not)

haha billy you must expand on that position! i had a theory at the time that (from title on in) it was a conceptual and a contrarian move on their part (but i have forgot the details of my theory, which *may* have been a bit conceptual and contrarian on my own part)

re #14 i think it is your fault 😉

I absolutely adore the Tour De France 03 album fwiw, and Expo 2000…it’s been a great decade for the lads (I even loved Karl Bartos ‘I’m A Message’)!

@25: A lot of people have covered “The Model” – as compared to other Kraftwerk songs, anyway. Chris Whitley used to do a solo banjo version in his live shows, and it holds up beautifully – and it’s surprisingly faithful, to boot. Oppose that to, say, Siouxsie’s version of “Hall of Mirrors,” which pinches the lyrics from the original but has to create a new musical context to frame them. That “The Model” comes through relatively unchanged, even when transformed into a front-porch stomp, is a testament to the sturdiness of the tune beneath the atmosphere.

Cover Version Watch: Ride, 1992! On the ever-erratic NME Ruby Trax compilation. They, um, failed to improve upon the original.

The pink is back for now I’m afraid – it was a server glitch!

But a redesign is on the way I’m told.

I still do not understand why this was released as a single so long after the album.

I remember hearing/reading at the time that it was Human League’s Phil Oakey talking up ‘The Model’ in various interviews (rather than meddling dj’s per se) that led to this surprise #1. Can anyone confirm? Anyhow, cracking tune with nifty inter-twining synth bass-lines…. As for direct steals from it: Eurythmics’s ‘Who’s that girl?’ is pretty close.

We get millions of e-mails from children all over the world praising the current logo.

It’s nice to think of “Computer Love” as a UK #1, but of course it was “The Model” which got all the airplay – and speaking as someone who was There At The Time, I’m also a little baffled as to how it broke through in such a spectacular fashion. Sure, the “futurist” DJs would have been playing the track for months, but it would be foolish to over-estimate their importance in direct commercial terms.

Much as I might tip my hat to Kraftwerk, I also carry a vague sense of guilt at never having fallen for them as hard as the critical consensus tells me I should. And I can’t help feeling that people read more into their work than is actually there, Peter Sellers in Being There style. Yes, OK, so they like computers. But let’s not credit them with too much clairvoyancy.

“The Model” is an OK little pop tune, but it’s not a particular favourite and even in early 1982 it was beginning to curl a little round the edges. But as others have commented, 1982 was the year when Kraftwerk’s influence made itself most keenly felt, with the arrival of “Planet Rock” and the paradigm-shifting glories of electro-funk.

And MY GOD, did that stuff rock my world. The day I brought home 12″ copies of “Planet Rock”, “The Message” and Arthur Baker/John Robie’s brilliant cover of Eddy Grant’s “Walking On Sunshine” (as credited to Rockers Revenge) was every bit as personally significant as the day I brought home The Damned “New Rose”, just under six years earlier. My student housemates thought I’d lost the plot, just as my schoolmates had done with punk rock…. always a good sign!

BTW, which came first – Kraftwerk’s “Showroom Dummies” or Doctor Who’s Autons?

I once had a schoolmate regale me with the out-of-body experience to be had listening to Vangelis on headphones while lying on the floor. Luckily I had already been snared by The Jam so thought he was talking a lot of hippy tosh. Otherwise it could all have gone pear-shaped for me musically after that.

The Autons were definite hide-behind-the-sofa creatures at the time. I remember being quite excited as a kid as parts of those episodes were filmed at Gatwick airport – just up the road from where I lived. I never much cared for Pertwee – particularly when he introduced Bessie(?) the car although I did take a shine to Katy Manning as Jo Grant.

So Mike, you and I both spent part of Christmas ’75 going “wow” at “The Prophet’s Song”?

Another beautiful Kraftwerk tune which examines the emotional paradox of communications technology and the inherent emotional disconnection is The Telephone Call on Electric Cafe. That and Computer Love have to be two of my favourite tunes of all time- when CL reaches it’s instrumental half, it’s just sheer bliss for me.