Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark -- Secret

 

Being a Civic Holiday today, I thought it would be time for another holiday edition of Reminiscings of Youth.

For this edition, I decided to go with the English electronic band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD). Back in 2018, I wrote up an article "YMO on the Brain" in which I related how Japan's Yellow Magic Orchestra got me so much into technopop that I was coursing through Western pop music to see if there were any other bands with that special synthy sound. Though I didn't mention them in my list, OMD was one of those outfits.

The band centered around Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, and originating in the middle of the 1970s, OMD apparently had even started out a few years earlier than YMO. But such was my obsession that I was going nuts over the fact that the bands shared a couple of initials. Anyways, one of their singles that I was interested in was "Secret" from July 1985. A song of sorting out one's feelings of love and doing the right thing, I think it was one of the more poppier entries by McCluskey and Humphreys that's been recognizable all these years with that sing-songy shoutout of the title by Maureen Humphreys according to Wikipedia, although I don't know what exactly her familial relationship is with Paul.

Of course, any hit song in the 1980s was going to get that extended remix treatment and so was the case for "Secret". The synthesizers, the crashing percussion and the shoutout of the title made it all inevitable for the song. Most likely, I heard the remix on one of the radio stations that I used to hear on Saturday nights that specialized in those elongated dance versions.

So, what else was being released as singles in July 1985?

Onyanko Club -- Sailor Fuku wo Nugasanaide （セーラー服を脱がさないで）

Yukiko Okada -- Kanashii Yokan （哀しい予感）

Meiko Nakahara -- R-R-R-Russian Roulette（ロ・ロ・ロ・ロシアン・ルーレット）