Vienna

Billy Currie says in a Guardian oral history that he wrote the piece in January 1980; Cann's drum-machine pattern was the basis. The single edit runs 4:37 and the album and 12-inch version 4:53, with Plank and Ultravox producing. The sound is built on a grand piano, a viola solo influenced by Max Reger, MiniMoog bass, an Elka string synth and a Roland CR-78 drum machine, and Currie wanted a late-19th-century romantic sound. Ure's 2004 autobiography If I Was calls it a love song, the story of a holiday romance, though he had never been to Vienna or had one, and says his wife Brenda told him to write a song like that Vienna, meaning Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon". Chrysalis thought it too long and experimental, and the band refused to edit it, so "Passing Strangers" went out first; Cann says the label found it long and depressing. It spent four weeks at number 2 in the UK, kept off the top by John Lennon's "Woman" for one week and Joe Dolce's "Shaddap You Face" for three. It reached number 1 in Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands, 11 in Australia, 8 in Austria and 2 in New Zealand.