Reception
Prior to the release of the single, the Daily Mirror printed a front-page story headed "BAN THIS SICK STUNT" alongside a story by Kate Thornton which said the song was "pro-drugs" and called for the single to be banned. The pre-release single had an inlay which Thornton alleged showed how to make an origami 'wrap' or parcel with the intention of "offering teenage fans a DIY guide on hiding illegal drugs". In an interview with music paper NME on the same day, Kate Thornton was quoted to say: "We wanted to see the sleeve pulled and we thought it was a crusade we would take up single-handedly. I think the sleeve is something that will concern our readers, although it may not concern yours." The band agreed to change the artwork, while continuing to assert that Kate Thornton had misinterpreted the meaning of both the sleeve art and the song's lyrics. Lead singer Jarvis Cocker released a statement two days later saying: "...'Sorted' is not a pro-drugs song... Nowhere on the sleeve does it say you are supposed to put drugs in here but I understand the confusion... I wouldn't want anything we do to encourage people to take drugs because they aren't a solution or an answer to anything. I don't think anyone who listens to Sorted would come away thinking it had a pro drugs message. If they did I would say they had misinterpreted it." The Daily Mirror printed his statement, but he was unhappy that the front page article written by Thornton contained the misquote "I don't want the sleeve to get in the way of what the record is saying, which is an anti-drugs message", which he felt oversimplified the song's meaning once again. He also criticised Thornton's decision to contact the father of a victim of an Ecstacy-related death for a response. The Daily Mirror campaign continued, publishing their readers' response to a poll to have the song itself banned. The original sleeve was replaced with a plain white sleeve once the initial pressing had sold out.
Pre-release orders reached over 200,000, according to Nick Rowe, marketing director for Island Records, the biggest pre-release total in the label's history to that date. The single reached number two on the UK Single Charts.
The furore surrounding the single was spoofed by Chris Morris in the Channel 4 satirical series Brass Eye.
Read more about this topic: Sorted For E's & Wizz
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)