Love the movie or think it’s piffle, it’s pretty obvious that Enola Gay featuring on the soundtrack early in Alex Garland’s tale of technological advancement via AI was no accident. Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge goes big screen in a wild siege flick… with a top soundtrack. More French love for Enola Gay, this time in a musical comedy about two guys who love the ‘80s, and have the look-a-likes of famed French ‘80s performers to prove it! This was a French-Canadian autobiographical tale from director Ricardo Trogi, which centres around his family moving to a new neighbourhood back in 1981 – the year of Enola Gay’s release. OMD shared soundtrack duties with Vanilla Ice in this French film that we’ll let IMDB describe for us: “Ugly geek becomes a hunk thanks to a deodorant.” Here are film appearances of the original Enola Gay…Ī British take on the house party sleaze-comedy genre, at least this one had a top soundtrack, also featuring the likes of Elvis Costello, Bananarama, Altered Images, Modern Romance and Madness.įrom one war to another… A Golden Globe-winning (Best Foreign Language Film) animated documentary in which director Ari Folman interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. It became a guilty pleasure for many Aussies, and introduced them to the many joys of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark to come.Īs for featuring in movies, Enola Gay is one of many of the band’s songs to appear on soundtracks, and also the most frequently used – even though If You Leave is usually the first one that comes to mind, being written for – and pivotal to – the John Hughes classic Pretty in Pink. The line “It’s 8:15, and that’s the time that it’s always been” being quite chilling when you realise that, with this being the time the bomb detonated, clocks were frozen with their hands at eight and three.Įnola Gay has gone on to arguably become OMD’s signature tune, instantly recognisable from its drum machine opening and, like many of their best songs, featuring a super-catchy, instrumental-only chorus.Ĭhart-wise, despite having sold over five million copies worldwide, a lack of local support saw Enola Gay only make it to number 49 on the Australian charts.
The lyrics of Enola Gay are in no way celebratory, highlighting the dichotomy of dropping the bomb being an unthinkably horrific thing to do, but that it did end World War II, meaning many more atrocities were possibly avoided. McCluskey has claimed that he was a “geeky kid” into airplanes, and that this led to a fascination with the horrors of war.
Regardless, Enola Gay was so irresistible that it became the lead – and only – single to be taken from OMD’s second album, Organisation. Written by the duo’s Andy McCluskey, his core band partner Paul Humphreys didn’t like it much. Their name is enough of an indication of that! You wouldn’t normally expect a perfect synthpop experience to centre around the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, but then Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark never did things by the book. This time around we’re checking out OMD’s poptastic Enola Gay. Many movies rely on songs to set the mood, and there are some that are relied upon a lot – what we like to call ‘Soundtrack Staples’.