KRAFTWERK – “The Model”/”Computer Love”
Cometh the hour, cometh the robots: there is no other moment in pop history when Kraftwerk could have got to number one here – and were it not for those meddling DJs, they wouldn’t have. It still feels slightly odd and unlikely to be writing about them – it’s like Noel Edmonds deciding to champion “Jesus” and giving the Velvet Underground a chart-topper.
Not that “The Model” isn’t an obvious hit: it’s never been my favourite Kraftwerk tune, but as those DJs realised its translated awkwardness gives it commercial legs as a novelty record. That isn’t to say I don’t like it: all Kraftwerk’s immense virtues are here too. Few bands have ever made cleaner or better designed records, doing just enough with a melody or a rhythm to make a track seem vast without ever crossing the line into bombast. Their music prefigured a clear-lined, contoured decade where the style and architecture of things would come into glossy focus.
Emotional architecture was another Kraftwerk speciality – drawing out surprisingly subtle moods from the scantiest of materials. That’s what drives the gorgeous and far-sighted “Computer Love”, still the best song ever written about the Internet and the atomisation it both enables and heals. Its chiming melodies are tender and hopeful, a reaching out – “just talk!” sang Coldplay when they borrowed the tune, with that special obviousness of theirs – but the long emptiness of the track leaves the question of a reply quite open.
Form following content: the lonely man with a TV for company is the hidden inverse of the bleak celebrity world sketched on the more famous flip. Though the narrators of “The Model” and “Computer Love” may have more in common than it first appears: as the song progresses, you get the idea its singer has never in fact met the girl he at first seems to know.
Kraftwerk gave the impression that their preferred model of human relationships is the peloton, not the nightclub, but in their eyes the fashion and celebrity system is as clearly a machine as anything else they’ve sung about. This could lead to a pat exercise in critique, Scientific Socialism style, but Kraftwerk are careful not to position themselves outside the system: “I’d like to take her home with me, that’s understood”. Desire is the model’s inescapable product (and yes, the song title is a pun!).
Kraftwerk’s inclusion in the (systemic) model accounts for the dispassionate, even fatalist tone the vocalist adopts: it’s an outlier in their catalogue because it’s one of their rare attempts to not let emotion show (compare it to the creepy cabaret vibe of “Hall Of Mirrors”, their other great meditation on celebrity). On “The Model”, Kraftwerk’s mechanoid image is less of a bluff than usual.
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Tom in FT / Popular • Pop • 2,179 views • Share/Save
@25: A lot of people have covered “The Model” – as compared to other Kraftwerk songs, anyway. Chris Whitley used to do a solo banjo version in his live shows, and it holds up beautifully – and it’s surprisingly faithful, to boot. Oppose that to, say, Siouxsie’s version of “Hall of Mirrors,” which pinches the lyrics from the original but has to create a new musical context to frame them. That “The Model” comes through relatively unchanged, even when transformed into a front-porch stomp, is a testament to the sturdiness of the tune beneath the atmosphere.
The Mix takes the impossible tech from Blade Runner (where photo enhancement can help you see around corners) to its musical conclusion, giving these old songs the basslines and subtleties that today’s demanding experimental microhorse fans expect. Actually I wouldn’t be surprised if they came out with yet another “Mix” of their old stuff – and on and on! Talk about “timeless”! This re-sharpening prefigured 1) the enhanced versions of Star Wars 2) Blu-Ray discs and 3) Mad Men, if you accept early 1960s America as a blurry popcult object, and I do. In any case what’s lovely about The Mix for me is that it’s really something to see a band as deliberately modernist as Kraftwerk pull the rug out from their own (and their own fans’) essentialism. The Mix really does sound better to sensibilities raised on the actual thriving genre of electronic dance music. That said, I like the stubbornness of the originals. No one would ever produce tracks like those today – they’re stuck in their time, not quite right. I love it. And perhaps unsurprisingly, I like them even better now that The Mix exists.
As long as we’re talkin cover versions, “Model” fans may want to listen to one from 1979 by Snakefinger, a guitarist for the Residents. You can look at the cover and listen to it here – http://learning2share.blogspot.com/2008/04/two-7-inch-singles-from-snakefinger.html
It’s a woozy, churning, rock rendition that in 1999 was given, in a final coup de something, an electro treatment by DJ Hell as a white label single.
EDIT — Included link and correct year for Snakefinger
Cover Version Watch: Ride, 1992! On the ever-erratic NME Ruby Trax compilation. They, um, failed to improve upon the original.
Tom, is it just me or have you finally got rid of that horrid pink background, which caused a lot of rude comments from some of my builders when they caught me using Popular in my site office?
Which ever it is, HURRAH!!!!!!!
The pink is back for now I’m afraid – it was a server glitch!
But a redesign is on the way I’m told.
pˆnk is as pˆnk does
I still do not understand why this was released as a single so long after the album.
@DV (the comments aren’t numbered any more, are they?) – ‘Computer Love’ was only released a few weeks after the album, it just so happened that the old album track they’d stuck on the B-side proved to have a life of its own a few months down the line, for whatever reason. The reference books now treat them as a single entity because the catalogue number didn’t change, although the cover suggests that EMI must have chosen to focus on ‘The Model’. Any one old enough to correct me is welcome to do so, of course.
Weren’t the Kraftwerk albums all going to re-released in upgraded versions about six years ago? I put off buying any of them when I heard that, so I’ve still only got Autobahn.
I remember hearing/reading at the time that it was Human League’s Phil Oakey talking up ‘The Model’ in various interviews (rather than meddling dj’s per se) that led to this surprise #1. Can anyone confirm? Anyhow, cracking tune with nifty inter-twining synth bass-lines…. As for direct steals from it: Eurythmics’s ‘Who’s that girl?’ is pretty close.
it’s fade to blue sitewise now – I’m not sure it matches the mood somehow
this too will pass. we’ll be back in our usual palette when we sort out our server issues.
Tom, if you’re redesigning the site, can you bring back the original Freaky Trigger logo – I never liked that remake/remodel.
We get millions of e-mails from children all over the world praising the current logo.
….can you make it look like a very dull contract so it can appear as if I’m actually doing some work
It’s nice to think of “Computer Love” as a UK #1, but of course it was “The Model” which got all the airplay – and speaking as someone who was There At The Time, I’m also a little baffled as to how it broke through in such a spectacular fashion. Sure, the “futurist” DJs would have been playing the track for months, but it would be foolish to over-estimate their importance in direct commercial terms.
Much as I might tip my hat to Kraftwerk, I also carry a vague sense of guilt at never having fallen for them as hard as the critical consensus tells me I should. And I can’t help feeling that people read more into their work than is actually there, Peter Sellers in Being There style. Yes, OK, so they like computers. But let’s not credit them with too much clairvoyancy.
“The Model” is an OK little pop tune, but it’s not a particular favourite and even in early 1982 it was beginning to curl a little round the edges. But as others have commented, 1982 was the year when Kraftwerk’s influence made itself most keenly felt, with the arrival of “Planet Rock” and the paradigm-shifting glories of electro-funk.
And MY GOD, did that stuff rock my world. The day I brought home 12″ copies of “Planet Rock”, “The Message” and Arthur Baker/John Robie’s brilliant cover of Eddy Grant’s “Walking On Sunshine” (as credited to Rockers Revenge) was every bit as personally significant as the day I brought home The Damned “New Rose”, just under six years earlier. My student housemates thought I’d lost the plot, just as my schoolmates had done with punk rock…. always a good sign!
Pete – re the pink background – a colleague asked me about that one day, and I was telling her it wasn’t what she thought. “There’s all kinds of different stuff on here – look, either side of Blondie there’s Barbra Streisand and Abba. OK, bad example.”
Moving swiftly on to the record under discussion… It wasn’t generally the done thing to make a grand entrance to an RHC Stomp night, but around that time there were four girls who came in wearing identical shirt/trouser combos with a pocket calculator in the shirt pocket, as in the latest Kraftwerk “look”, and got a round of applause.
The thing I most loved about this one was the subtlety of the beat, as if the electronic drums were being hit with brushes as opposed to drumsticks. It makes the whole affair, in the word used twice upthread, “gentle” – you can imagine the fat, indeed phat, beats that some acts would have given it. (Kraftwerk themselves elsewhere – I played The Mix version of “The Robots” to a 13-year-old who’d never heard it, and he took on a severe twitch in his seat – enjoying it, mind.) The German accent has an arch quality of detachment that goes well with the subject matter.
Anyone else remember the joy of sitting between speakers or wearing headphones and hearing “Autobahn” for the first time, as they explore the possibilities of stereo in pop? Typical of them that when you see clips shows, the ‘Werk are featured not on TOTP, The Tube or anything like that, but “Tomorrow’s World”.
BTW, which came first – Kraftwerk’s “Showroom Dummies” or Doctor Who’s Autons?
Conrad re “….can you make it look like a very dull contract so it can appear as if I’m actually doing some work”
Unfortunately not as this would be discrimination against our increasing amount of unemployed readers.
I once had a schoolmate regale me with the out-of-body experience to be had listening to Vangelis on headphones while lying on the floor. Luckily I had already been snared by The Jam so thought he was talking a lot of hippy tosh. Otherwise it could all have gone pear-shaped for me musically after that.
The Autons were in Spearhead from Space…Pertwee’s first Dr Who – in 1970, some years before Trans-Europe Express.
Mike’s comment about the success of The Model being a little baffling is kind of how I recall it. There really doesn’t seem to have been any one particular underlying reason for it suddenly going to Number 1.
The Autons were definite hide-behind-the-sofa creatures at the time. I remember being quite excited as a kid as parts of those episodes were filmed at Gatwick airport – just up the road from where I lived. I never much cared for Pertwee – particularly when he introduced Bessie(?) the car although I did take a shine to Katy Manning as Jo Grant.
Anyone else remember the joy of sitting between speakers or wearing headphones and hearing “Autobahn” for the first time, as they explore the possibilities of stereo in pop?
Yes, totally: the Autobahn album and Queen’s A Night At The Opera were the first two new albums I played on my first proper stereo system, a Xmas present from my Dad in 1975. And as an introduction to the concept of stereo sound, the album version of “Autobahn” is about as perfect as it gets.
I once had a schoolmate regale me with the out-of-body experience to be had listening to Vangelis on headphones while lying on the floor.
I once had to field a couple of excited schoolmates who came bursting into my study with a copy of Tangerine Dream’s Rubicon, demanding that I play it immediately for them. We listened to an entire side in silence – theirs reverential; mine politely masking boredom and irritation.
As the side finished, one of them sighed deeply and began the analysis.
“You know, I actually felt scared during that final section.”
“Yes, yes, me too”, chimed the other. “It was like I was…. drowning.”
“Yes, like drowning! That’s exactly how it was!”
Meanwhile, as I approached the trusty Garrard SP25 Mark IV, I realised that the whole album had been playing at 45rpm….
So Mike, you and I both spent part of Christmas ’75 going “wow” at “The Prophet’s Song”?
when I saw Tangerine Dream at the Brighton dome back in the 70s they made a big deal of ‘rotating’ the sound around the theatre which seemed quite impressive to my teenage ears but less so with hindsight.
I’d be happy to go back to mono.
Another beautiful Kraftwerk tune which examines the emotional paradox of communications technology and the inherent emotional disconnection is The Telephone Call on Electric Cafe. That and Computer Love have to be two of my favourite tunes of all time- when CL reaches it’s instrumental half, it’s just sheer bliss for me.
I have an awful feeling that I must have been a latterday 1991 shoegazing version of Mike’s schoolmates. My advocacy of Slowdive “It’s amazing – It’s like your swimming in sound!” was continually quoted back to me in derision by my best friend for many years after…
The Autons go on to reappear in 1971’s ‘Terror of the Autons’. This time they have smiling carnival faces, wear yellow blazers, cravats and boaters and hand killer plastic daffodils to passers-by. Is there a song which fits this image as well as ‘Showroom Dummies’ does for their first one? ‘The Plastic Age’ by Buggles is the best that I can think of…
‘Plastic Man’ by The Temptations?
wait, that doesn’t sound right… noes where is edit comment feature…
Scinitalling, in clearly a golden age of number 1s. The deceptively sanguine A-side is amazing in its original and punk cover form (Big Black was it?), but the lesser known one “Computer Love” is exceptionally good. I just wish more people of my generation and below knew of it before Coldplay and their worst album, with their J-Lo/Oasis style song sampling thievery.