Songs that move My Spirit part 2 - Vienna

My musical taste is perhaps rather eclectic, it includes Post-Punk New Wave from the early 80s.  Back then, it was quite cool to have androgynous looking people all pretty and made up with strange sounding synthesizers blaring while they spew  (supposedly) deep and philosophical lyrics - but some of them do stand out in my memory.  One particularly haunting song that moves me is Vienna by Ultravox.

Ultravox circa 1980s

Ultravox was a struggling English synthpop pioneer band in the late 70s and was left behind by their original vocalist & leader John Foxx.  Midge Ure took over as frontman, vocalist, keyboardist & guitarist of Ultravox in 1979 and this was the turning point for the band.  Vienna was part of the album "Vienna", released in 1981 - the song was actually put on side 2 of the vinyl album and number 8 of 9 songs.  The Vienna album was supposed to be titled Torque Point (a little Ultravox trivia there), but the record label Chrysalis changed it to Vienna after hearing the song.

The song begins with a bass drum beating like a human heart with an odd sounding noise replacing the usual snare drum part (to my untrained ear, the odd noise sounds like a bottomed out clap sound with a fat gated effect).  An analog lead synthesizer voice patch whines it way through as if it was a voice wafting in over the sparse music backdrop.  The song smolders for a bit with somber lyrics delivered in a haunting, low tone.

Later the keyboards enter like ray patches of sunlight bursting through thick dark clouds, Midge Ure's vocals bursting out into full force in a cry verging on the operatic, punctuated by delicate piano keys.  The song is gives an imagery of longing and sorrow for me.

Despite never reaching the top of the chart, for me, “Vienna” is Ultravox’s greatest triumph.  The song’s beautifully restrained composition is its strength,  giving the beautifully-realized atmosphere of “Vienna” space for the lyrics to craft emotions instead of outlining hard details.  The lyrics never explicitly state what the song is about, for they were focused with conveying the feeling through word choice and phrasing rather that explaining what exactly the narrator is reflecting about.

Upon the single’s release, the members of Ultravox played up the Teutonic, Old World associations of “Vienna” in the music press by discussing topics related to the Austrian city at end of the 19th century, particularly the Vienna Secession art movement and its president, Gustav Klimt.  Simon Reynolds picked up on this thread in his book Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984, where he cited “Vienna” as an example of an undercurrent of Eastern European imagery that dominated the New Romantic movement in the early 1980s.  Cataloging the track as Ultravox’s descent into “full-blown Teutonica”, Reynolds described “Vienna” as “inspired by a vague notion of a past-its-prime Hapsburg Empire sliding into decadence.”

Vienna Music Video

Sorry to disappoint you, because the song isn’t about that at all.  In truth, the song originated from an episode where an acquaintance of Ure’s misremembered the title of the Fleetwood Mac song “Rhiannon”.  The singer formulated what became the song’s chorus line, then wrote the rest of the song around it with his bandmates.  In his 2004 autobiography If I Was…, Ure explained, “[‘Vienna’] was a love song, the story of a holiday romance, about going to a beautiful place and meeting someone special.”  Ure’s lyrics were completely based in fantasy; he emphasized, “I’d never been to Vienna, never had a holiday romance.”  Perhaps most disappointing to music journalists, Ure revealed that there is no political subtext in “Vienna” at all.  Ure admitted in his book that he and his bandmates lied in interviews about the song’s meaning, throwing around any facts about turn of the century Vienna they could conjure in order to make themselves “sound interesting.”

Despite its actual meaning, it is not obvious from a scan of the lyrics that “Vienna” is about a holiday fling with a special someone.  There’s no direct mention of romance, much less a vacation aside from the almost casual inclusion of the Austrian city’s name in the chorus.  The object of the narrator’s affection is almost spectral; the only sign of intimacy is the warmth of a hand in the midst of an evening sky that “fades to the distance” as daylight breaks.  The song could be about any two people on a cold, lonely night anywhere in the world. 

This vagueness is key to “Vienna”.  Amidst the shuttering drumbeat and Ure’s late-night-fog croon, what the listener is left with is the sad sensation of reflecting on an incident from the past that grows ever more distant until it is almost meaningless.  As Ure explained, “You have this huge holiday romance, that you vow is going to continue forever, but, once you get back home and start living your nine-to-five job again, it just fades away.”  The lyrics stay away from specifics because the whole event is slowly fading away from the narrator’s memory.

As the wonderful holiday memory recedes into nothingness, what is prevalent is a sense of discomfort and loneliness.  Ure’s snatches of imagery conjure up impressions of unease.  Chilly imagery fills the lyrics, with references to “freezing breath”, “cool empty silence”, and a “cold grey sky”.  For what is supposed to be a touching memory, there is a definite sense of dread, illustrated by the “man in the dark in a picture frame” and the couplet “A voice reaching out in a piercing cry / It stays with you until”.  Even so, the memory beckons: Ure sings, “The music is weaving / Haunting notes, pizzicato strings / The rhythm is calling”.  Why are the narrator’s reflections so foreboding?  It feels as though the loss of that special moment is so overwhelming that it bleeds into and overwhelms the memory, so that all that are left are painful sensations.

Midge singing Vienna live back in 1988

The most striking lines in “Vienna” are in the chorus.  Upon first glance, the chorus seems to come from the “all that matters is the two of us” school of love songs.  It appears as though the narrator is noting that whatever gloom wafted through the verses has now gone, leaving only the two lovers.  However, he follows up the line “It means nothing to me”, with the more curious “This means nothing to me / Oh, Vienna”.  Ure hits the last line with a sorrowful ecstasy, where one can practically envision him looking up to the heavens as he feels the past fade away.  Ure elaborated in his book years later, “You say, ‘It means nothing to me,’ but you’re lying, harking back to Vienna, to a fabulous moment in time.”  What the chorus illustrates is that as time goes on, not only do the events of the narrator’s sojourn mean nothing, but so does the entire episode itself, leaving him to mourn the memory of what no longer is.  The “feeling is gone”, but he yearns for that time in Vienna nonetheless, no matter how much he denies it.  Except there really is nothing left to pine for.

Commenting on the fading memory he conceptualized for “Vienna”, Ure said, “I’d love to have it, but it’s all gone—forever. It wasn’t real life.” And that’s the key to “Vienna”.  Even though Ure has confirmed the song has no basis in reality, due to the impressionistic lyrics Ultravox is able to make the listener feel like something priceless has been lost.