The Alternative Number Ones: Electronic’s “Get The Message”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

People know about Electronic, right? People definitely did. In their day, Electronic were way more popular than most college-rock side projects. They had a bunch of hits, both in the UK and on American alt-rock radio. If Electronic were ever to get back together, I'm sure there would be interest. But there are vast numbers of people who would probably love this group and who might not know that they ever existed.

If you were to fantasy-draft an alternative rock group from a particular historical era, you might wind up with Electronic. Johnny Marr could be history's most important alt-rock guitarist; his spaced-out dream-jangle was just as important to the Smiths as whatever Morrissey was doing. When the Smiths broke up, Marr linked up with another Manchester legend: Bernard Sumner, the man who steered the surviving members of Joy Division out of tragedy and who basically invented early-'90s rave-rock with New Order. These guys were in the same place at the same time, and they were friends. The fact that they ever made music together feels like a small miracle.

It would be one thing if Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr got together to look up their own butts and get self-indulgent, but that's not what happened. Electronic were out to make hits, baby! Their self-titled 1991 album absolutely fucking rocks. It sounds a whole lot like New Order, which is a great thing. Basically, we got a bonus album of New Order jams from when that band was at the peak of its influence, but with some extremely cool Johnny Marr guitar sounds that don't appear on any actual New Order records. They did this at the exact moment that Manchester was the most important city on the alt-rock planet! And they got the Pet Shop Boys to make some songs with them! That's awesome!

Maybe the problem is the name. The internet only barely existed in 1991, and search engine optimization was not a concern yet. Even so, it's hard to imagine a more blank and generic name than Electronic. Now that I think about it, the Smiths and New Order also had generic names, but Electronic took that tendency even further. It's not like there are entire genres widely known as smiths music or new order music. If you're trying to find Electronic on streaming services, you might need to come up with a few different word combinations.

The Smiths and New Order were popular in their time, but both bands have since entered the beyond-canonical realm. If there's a movie set in the '80s, there's a good chance that it'll have Smiths and New Order needledrops; they serve the same omnipresent function that Creedence once did for '60s movies. People cite the Smiths and New Order as influences all the time, to the point where both names are clichés. Nobody cites Electronic, though. Maybe they should. Electronic weren't exactly a mainstay on American alternative radio throughout the '90s, but they had their moment, and that moment included one really good song that went all the way to #1.

It's an accident of fate that the Smiths will never appear in this column. The Smiths broke up in 1987, the year before Billboard started keeping track of modern rock radio. If the Modern Rock chart overlapped with the Smiths' existence at all, then they would've almost certainly been in this column. Smiths records were actual pop hits in the UK. Over here, the band was a cult phenomenon, but a hugely important one. They never made the Hot 100, and their highest-charting album, the 1987 swan song Strageways, Here We Come, never got past #55 on the Billboard 200. On college radio, though, the Smiths were just as totemic as R.E.M., their rough American equivalents.

When Johnny Marr and Stephen Patrick Morrissey were teenagers, they met at a Patti Smith gig in Manchester. They were friends for a while, and they started the Smiths together in 1982. Factory Records and EMI both turned down the young band's demos, but Rough Trade signed them, and they released their debut single "Hand In Glove" in 1983. The band's self-titled debut came out a year later, and it presented a fully-formed band with an unmistakable visual, lyrical, and sonic aesthetic. Johnny Marr was principally responsible for the sound, a tingly and playful shimmy-sigh that drew on folk-rock and post-punk without ever fitting into either category. People are still trying and failing to sound like Smiths-era Johnny Marr.

The Smiths burned hot and bright, releasing four albums and a generous handful of extra tracks in their five years as a band. They landed a couple of singles in the British top 10, headlined Glastonbury, and generally left an asteroid-sized impact in left-of-center culture. In the summer of 1987, Johnny Marr finally got sick of Morrissey and of the sound that he thought he was expected to make with the Smiths, so he quit the band. The Smiths briefly tried to keep going with another guitarist, but they quickly gave up. By the time Strangeways, Here We Come hit record-store shelves, the Smiths were done.

Morrissey quickly went solo, and the other ex-Smiths backed him up for a little while. This column will get to Morrissey soon enough, but it's a little funny that Johnny Marr scored a Modern Rock chart-topper before Morrissey did -- a little like Kelly Rowland reaching #1 before Beyoncé. (It's not really like that, but you know what I mean.) Morrissey had a bunch of alt-radio hits that did well on the Modern Rock charts before Electronic's "Get The Message" reached #1, including a handful that went as high as #2. Both weeks that "Get The Message" was at #1, Morrissey was actually sitting at #10 with the atypically upbeat "Sing Your Life." (It's an 8.)

Where Morrissey took a direct path to solo stardom, Johnny Marr began a wandering-ronin axe-for-hire post-Smiths career that's taken him to some interesting places over the years. For a brief moment, Johnny Marr was a member of the Pretenders, though he only played on one single, 1988's "Windows Of The World." (It peaked at #21. The Pretenders' highest-charting Modern Rock hit, 1994's "Night In My Veins," peaked at #2. It's an 8.) From there, Marr joined the revolving-door lineup of Matt Johnson's long-running project The The. Marr was part of The The during that group's peak, and he stayed with them for six years -- a long time for an inherently unstable situation. (Marr played on The The's highest-charting Modern Rock hit, 1993's "Dogs Of Lust," which peaked at #2. It's an 8.)

While he was in The The, Johnny Marr was also doing Electronic with Bernard Sumner. Up until this point, Sumner has basically been a background character in this column. New Order were a huge deal in the UK and a steady draw in the US, and it's virtually impossible to imagine early-'90s dance-rock existing without them. I'm not going to get deep into that band's history here, since New Order themselves will eventually appear in this column. In 1989, New Order released their Technique album and toured the US with Public Image Ltd., Throwing Muses, and the Sugarcubes -- the so-called Monsters Of Alternative Rock tour. (They were using that term even then!) New Order also made "World In Motion," the extremely silly 1990 England World Cup anthem that took them all the way to #1 in the UK. (On the Modern Rock chart, "World In Motion" peaked at #5. It's, what, a 5? As an American, "World In Motion" is none of my business.) After that, New Order took a bit of a break, and the band members went off to do their own respective things for a while.

The cantankerous-genius New Order bassist Peter Hook started a rave-adjacent project called Revenge. (Revenge's only Modern Rock hit, 1990's "Pineapple Face," peaked at #8. It's a 6.) Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert, the other two members of New Order, started a group that was literally just called the Other Two. (The Other Two's only Modern Rock hit, 1994's "Selfish," peaked at #30 -- the lowest possible position on that chart at the time.) Frontman Bernard Sumner, meanwhile, tried to go solo. He didn't like it.

In a 2009 SPIN interview, Sumner said, "The idea behind Electronic was that I was getting shit from New Order whenever I tried to introduce tracks that had synth programming, so I thought, 'Fuck it, I’ll do it on my own.'" This is baffling to me. Isn't synth programming the entire point of New Order? Are there any New Order tracks without synth programming? Maybe I don't quite understand what "synth programming" means in this context. In any case, Sumner started making his own tracks in New Order's empty rehearsal space, but he found working by himself to be too depressing, so he invited his friend Johnny Marr in to make music with him.

Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr got to know each other in 1984, before the Smiths' debut album came out. In a 2021 Stereogum interview, Marr said, "He asked if I’d come play guitar on a record he was producing for Factory. I walked into the control room and he was finishing a mix of a song called 'Looking From A Hilltop' by Section 25. It just blew me away." Sumner was the uncredited producer on a two-song single from the Factory band Quando Quango, and Marr played itchy funk guitar on those tracks, which are not very good. You might not guess that it's Johnny Marr doing those Nile Rodgers-esque chicken-scratches, but it is.

Toward the end of his time in the Smiths, Marr tried to branch out into synthier club music, but his bandmates weren't into it. When he got the chance to work on some dance-pop with Sumner, he went all-in. For a little while, Sumner and his girlfriend -- he'd just been through a divorce -- moved into Marr's attic. Originally, their plan was for Electronic to be a sort of anonymous art project, with bare-bones record sleeves and no information about who was making the music. I don't know how they thought they could get away with that. Maybe they wanted the music to be instrumental, since Bernard Sumner's voice is not exactly hard to identify. In any case, that's why they chose the ultra-forgettable name Electronic.

For Electronic's 1989 debut single "Getting Away With It," Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr brought in the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant, who co-wrote the track and sang backup. (Chris Lowe, Tennant's PSB partner, apparently did some uncredited work on the track, as well. Pet Shop Boys' highest-charting Modern Rock single, 1993's "Can You Forgive Her," peaked at #10. It's a 7.) "Getting Away With It" is a rich, rippling track full of strings and funky guitar effects, and because Sumner is the guy singing, it comes out sounding a lot like New Order. I'm just learning now that Sumner's playfully miserable lyrics -- "I've been walking in the rain just to get wet on purpose/ I've been forcing myself not to forget, just to feel worse" -- were his idea of a Morrissey parody. Pretty funny!

"Getting Away With It" sold a ton of singles, and it reached #12 in the UK. In the US, the song became Electronic's only Hot 100 hit, peaking at #38. On the Modern Rock chart, it went as high as #4. (It's an 8.) When the single took off, Electronic weren't ready to capitalize with an album yet. They flew out to Los Angeles to play their first live show opening for Depeche Mode at Dodger Stadium, but they didn't come out with their self-titled album for another year and a half. For whatever reason, I'd never listened to Electronic before working on this column, and I really like it. It doesn't have the weird wheel-spinning effect that I sometimes get from side-project records. I can hear Sumner and Marr going for something, trying to make their tracks sound big and bright and new. That big, bright, new sound really mostly resembles New Order, but you won't hear me complaining about that.

"Get The Message," Electronic's second single, is a lovely illustration of where Sumner and Marr were able to push each other. There's not a ton of Johnny Marr guitar on "Get The Message," and you can tell that Marr was trying not to get pigeonholed as the indie-jangle guy when he came up with the basic melodic idea. Still, the strummy chords that open the song are absolutely gorgeous, and Marr's guitar adds new layers of texture whenever it reappears. Mostly, the track is top-shelf circa-1991 dance-pop, with colossal drum sounds, bouncy electro-bass, and synth-strings that reach for transcendent melodrama. All that stuff puts Bernard Sumner in a wistful mood, and he sounds awesome when he's in that space.

Here's something that I'm learning about myself today: I don't care about Sumner's lyrics. Never did! I can sing along with a lot of them, but I simply don't think about what those words mean when I'm singing them. Is that weird? Sumner's voice, a kind of weary and sentimental sigh, doesn't exactly have a ton of range, but it always establishes the track's mood. "Get The Message" seems to be a breakup song about a six-foot angel, and that's all I've got for you. The voice matters more than the words, and the voice pulls me right along into its wistfulness zone.

I wonder how "Get The Message" might work with another singer. Maybe it wouldn't sound like New Order at all. Maybe the bright, sharp pop effects on the song -- the synth-horn stabs, the wailing-diva backup vocals, the wah-wah guitar that comes in on the bridge -- would overwhelm everything else. But "Get The Message" doesn't have another singer; it has Bernard Sumner in that moment when Sumner just couldn't sing something less than awesome. It's a banger.

Over the years, Johnny Marr has said that "Get The Message" is the song he's proudest of. Marr claims that he was trying to come up with his own take on the Family Stand's funky 1990 R&B single "Ghetto Heaven," and I can hear some of that breakbeat propulsion at work on "Get The Message." Marr came up with the idea for the track, and then Sumner went to work on it. Marr heard the finished version for the first time while he was in Japan, playing some shows with The The. He was on a bullet train, listening to "Get The Message" on his Walkman, and it knocked him out. I wish I could've heard "Get The Message" for the first time on a Walkman while taking a bullet train across Japan. That sounds great, whether or not you were one of the people responsible for the song.

Electronic performed "Get The Message" for the first time at Dodger Stadium. Later, Sumner and Marr went off to the Philippines to film the "Get The Message" video with photographer Gunther Deichmann. Marr apparently almost fell into a volcano while shooting it, which would've been a hell of a way to go. The clip looks about as early-'90s as any video has ever looked, and it highlights just how unglamorous those two guys were. Still, "Get The Message" was a big UK hit, going all the way to #8 over there. Sumner and Marr, along with their backing band, mimed the track on Top Of The Pops.

It's not exactly surprising that modern rock radio got on board with the Electronic album, even if it sounds more nakedly pop than just about anything else that Johnny Marr ever did. The album hit right in the rave-rock sweet spot, and plenty of listeners probably had emotional attachments to most members of the group. Electronic followed "Get The Message" with "Tighten Up," which peaked at #6 later in 1991. (It's an 8.)

Electronic only played a few live shows in support of their album, but the record still sold pretty well. A year later, both members of Electronic got back together with the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant for "Disappointed," a single for the soundtrack of the extremely forgotten half-animated flop Cool World. That song became Electronic's biggest UK hit, and it peaked at #9 on the Modern Rock chart. (It's a 6.)

Eventually, New Order got busy again, and Electronic fell by the wayside. After a few years, Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr got back together, this time with former Kraftwerk member Karl Bartos, and recorded the sophomore album Raise The Pressure. Two years after that, Sumner and Marr got together with members of the Doves and Black Grape for Twisted Tenderness, a third Electronic album. Both of those records sent singles into the UK top 20, but neither of them meant anything in America. None of Electronic's singles after "Disappointed" made the Modern Rock chart. Electronic never played any live shows for Raise The Pressure or Twisted Tenderness, and the project was effectively done by 2000.

Johnny Marr went on to play guitar on a bunch of other people's records. He's been a regular Pet Shop Boys collaborator for decades, and he's had some weird, random stints in other bands. For a few years in the late 2000s, Marr was a member of Modest Mouse, a group that'll eventually appear in this column. (When Marr was in Modest Mouse, their highest-charting single was 2007's "Dashboard," which peaked at #5. It's a 4.) After that, Marr spent a few years with the Cribs, a UK family band whose members are way younger than him. Finally, Marr went solo, and he's now apparently got enough solo records that he put out a best-of collection last year.

These days, Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner will occasionally pop up at each other's shows and perform "Getting Away With It," which is far and away Electronic's best-remembered track. I definitely heard "Getting Away With It" on the radio in the '90s a few times, and I probably just thought it was a New Order song. I don't remember hearing "Get The Message"; at least on my local alt-rock station, it must've fallen out of rotation pretty quickly. But "Get The Message" is a great song on an album full of them. That record is just sitting there, waiting for people to notice that it exists.

GRADE: 8/10

BONUS BEATS: Here's the very pretty, relatively minimal version of "Get The Message" that the producer Lusine released in 2013: