Make It New: Gary Numan - "The Pleasure Principle" (1979)

At long last, Make It New finally reaches an artist that sounds like the prototype for what I think the genre sounds like. When starting this column, there were certain assumptions I made around new wave that were distinctly 80s. I didn’t think of it so much as incorporating rock or ska like most of the bands covered so far, but something more driven by synthesizers like Gary Numan. The only real connection I’ve seen between “The Pleasure Principle” and most albums covered before is that they aren’t conventional from a marketing standpoint. They all have their own world of concept albums that are closer to audiobooks than Top 40 charters. The fact that they could ever overlap with mainstream success is the most exciting yet confusing thing imaginable.

This is what makes the turn of the Late 70s and Early 80s into one of the most fascinating times for music in general. In some ways it was deconstructing everything that was big at the time, breaking down overly orchestrated bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and finding what made music worth continuing for the common audience. It embraced hooks, but it also took on the identity of the outside, and few managed to ride it to success quite like Numan did. While this is a column only looking at his 1979 album, it is important to note that his status as a one hit wonder grows complicated the more that one looks at his legacy. How could the person who is best known for “Cars” lead to a career that reshaped the entire industry?

An interesting footnote to “The Pleasure Principle” is that it wasn’t the only album that Numan released in 1979. Prior to the launch of his solo career, the singer emerged with his band Tubeway Army, whose album “Replicas” produced the hit “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” and was said to have more in line with the punk rock movement of the era. With that said, Tubeway Army was a fairly successful band having a gold record. It is also rumored that since they were inspired by Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” that they invented the concept of replicants used in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), though little confirms actual influence. Still, it's the perfect guideline for Numan to spin off and do his own thing.

One of the most evident things about Gary Numan as an artist is how he presents as very cold and robotic. It is suggested that this is because of happenstance caused by heavy acne. His discomfort with his facial condition lead him to conceal it and hide his flaws. It made him self-conscious as a performer and thus meant that he had an unnatural stage presence. Given that he also is said to have taken his name from the Yellow Pages when he found the name “Neumann,” there’s a lot that finds him at odds with conventional pop superstardom. He even wanted to be a pilot, which he would actively pursue until his music career took off – though he continued to fly randomly until 2013.

Yes, “The Pleasure Principle” is named after the René Magritte painting where a man’s head is missing from underneath a bowler hat. Among the things that made the album stand out was its absence of guitars, relying on more robotic instruments that included the Minimoog synthesizer and the Polymoog keyboard. He was considered to be one of the first artists to use this approach in music, helping to popularize synth-pop techniques such as flanging, phasing, and reverb while embracing a science fiction aesthetic lyrically. He continued to sing in a robotic manner, doing his best to take out any complicated emotions. In fact, many of the songs aren’t centered on romance or typical themes, but on machinery and consumerism that is reminiscent of The Buggles. Even then, The Buggles showed some sign of human observation whereas here it’s all a bit impersonal and more reliant on ethereal techniques.

This is evident in the track names that included concepts like “Metal,” “Films,” and “Engineers.” Even the opening song “Airlane” gives off an impression more of immersing oneself in a surreal alternate dimension than anything found in conventional pop. If one thing is true, it’s that “The Pleasure Principle” feels designed not for pop structure but as a study of what sound can achieve. There is a recurring technique in every song and motifs emerge, but nothing about them feels designed to be danced to. They’re mood pieces, more reflective of where sci-fi cinema would be headed. If something like “Complex” was played in the background of a B-Movie of an astronaut floating through space, there’s a good chance it would improve the atmosphere. Everything about the album feels alien without turning to eccentric, overbearing gimmickry. 

At times the album reminds me of a less accessible David Bowie circa Ziggy Stardust. There is this celebration of differences that emerges, and it’s a miracle that a lot of the hooks actually are endearing. It’s simultaneously one of the most distant albums on the list while also being one of the most fascinating. It’s clearly a character commenting on components of their universe, but what is it saying as a greater picture? To Numan’s credit, all of it is very interesting on its own. It could just be that the instrumentation feels different to a strong extent from what has been featured so far. There isn’t a conventional rock sound driving this. At most, there are violins and violas to ground the sound in something romantic and familiar, but even that doesn’t keep it from being the most experimental record on here so far.

I am amazed at how a record like this actually stood to become so influential. Then again, there is something to be said for new wave being the genre that dominated MTV in 1979, at a point where anything could’ve happened. The high concept was clearly en vogue and Numan was at the forefront in a major way. He didn’t write conventional hits, which is really saying something about the success of “Cars.” Outside of The United States, it is easy to see his career as so much more. However here, it remains his most successful song and thus labels him a one hit wonder. Then again, “Cars” wasn’t exactly singing about anything joyful akin to The Beach Boys. No, this was:

Here in my car

I feel safest of all

I can lock all my doors

It's the only way to live

In cars

It helps that the repetition of the bare bones songwriting is infectious. The synth is bouncy in the right ways and the clashing percussion makes it work with Numan’s cold voice. Even then, it’s so weird that it shouldn’t work. It’s at best about a bohemian who lives out of his car because of his paranoia at the world. Nobody was really writing songs about that, and yet here he was. There’s a codependence that runs throughout the album where even a seemingly universal theme like “Films” is more about something cold and removed from emotion. It makes sense that “Cars” would be the hit of the 10 songs, if only because it gets closest to the verse-chorus-verse structure without actually having it. The instruments are at times the chorus more than Numan is, and even the breakdowns are weirdly regimented. Compared to actual one hit wonders like The Vapors with “Turning Japanese,” Numan dodged a bullet by having his outlier at least fit into a greater world aesthetic.

What is more impressive is that “The Pleasure Principle” may be where the greatest success happened, but it’s not the biggest-selling album of his career. His album would only be certified gold in Australia, Canada, and The United Kingdom. Given that he would sell 10 million records in total, there was definitely a lot of a career left to embrace. His fans would come to be called Numanoids while critics of the time argued that he was ruining music by taking it away from the conventional guitar-bass-drums structure. Despite all that, he would come to influence a variety of genres and artists in the decades to come. This is notably true in hip-hop (Afrika Bambaataa), industrial (Nine Inch Nails), and even house music where Basement Jaxx would earn one of their biggest hits “Where’s Your Head At?” which featured a sample of Numan’s “M.E.” His songs would also be featured on many soundtracks and covered by dozens of artists in the decades to follow.

A fun irony to this entry of Make It New is that Gary Numan has defied the odds in a major way. In almost every example covered so far, the band has experienced immediate success before fizzling out by the Mid-80s due to declining interest. Likewise, they would regroup over the upcoming decades as nostalgic acts. This isn’t to say that Numan likely doesn’t bank on a few of his hits now, but his only major tie to this stereotype is the band he was in BEFORE “The Pleasure Principle.” The Tubeway Army had a significant immediate success but fizzled by the end of 1979. Numan meanwhile continues to release music to this day and whose longest break between album releases was “Pure” in 2000 and “Jagged” in 2006. He’s been steadily working since 1978 and that’s a very admirable achievement.

Gary Numan is an artist who feels like he came out of nowhere on this list. Most of these bands are very much of their time and reflect short appeal very well. While I don’t believe that everything mentioned here is entitled to the success of “The Pleasure Principle,” enough of it clearly inspired multiple genres and shifted how the world thought of synth-pop. It is likely that the cliché 80s sound wouldn’t fully be what it was without him. He made it cool even while being one of the most wondrously unmarketable popstars of his kind. I love that I can listen to “M.E.” and realize that I heard it on a Basement Jaxx song, or that half of the instrumentations feel like a blueprint of what’s to come. Even Numan feeling like a relative of Bowie’s more experimental vocal stylings is fun. 

I don’t know that I love “The Pleasure Principle” all that much, but it is an album that got me very excited in ways that feel pertinent to this journey. I’ve been wanting to understand what makes a band new wave, and I at least have this record now as a reference point. Even if one could argue that it’s more fitting for synth-pop or any subgenre, it does sound like what I assumed new wave is supposed to be. I’m happy to report that my definition is much wider now, but even then there are stereotypes for a reason. This is the first one to feel removed enough from rock as a genre that it indeed feels like an entirely new wave of music. It’s weird, it’s atmospheric, and it’s everything that is about to become the new mainstream. I love that even the poppy songs here aren’t pop by design. It defies the odds in every way and I respect Numan for being a pioneer in that way.

Coming Up Next: The Jam – “All Mod Cons” (1978)