Origins
The title was inspired by the Joy Division EP record "An Ideal for Living". The opening line of the song 'Libraries gave us power' was inspired by the legend above the entrance to the former library in Pillgwenlly, Newport, near the band's home town of Blackwood in Wales: 'Knowledge is Power'. The next line, 'then work came and made us free', refers to the German slogan Arbeit macht frei that featured above the gates of Nazi concentration camps and which had been used previously by the band in their song "The Intense Humming of Evil" on the album The Holy Bible. The single reached number two in the UK charts on 27 April 1996 and was the first in a run of five consecutive releases to be top ten hits.
The song explores themes of class conflict and working class identity and solidarity, inspired by the band's strong socialist convictions. Its video included scenes of fox hunting and Royal Ascot to represent what the band saw as class privilege.
The CD single also included the songs "Mr Carbohydrate", "Dead Passive" and "Dead Trees and Traffic Islands", while the cassette included a live version of "Bright Eyes".
The song was the first to be written and released by the band following the mysterious disappearance of figurehead Richey Edwards the previous year ans was used as the opening track on Forever Delayed, the band's greatest hits album released in November 2002.
Read more about this topic: A Design For Life
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)