Electronic - Getting Away With It (Updated 31st October 2012)

Electronic were a duo comprising of Johnny Marr of The Smiths and Bernard Sumner of New Order/Joy Division. They're easily my favourite of the many New Order side bands too! Here though we've got an extra guess: Neil Tennant from Pet Shop Boys makes an appearance on backing vocals. He also had a hand in producing the track, but its uncredited. Anyhow, this is Electronic's debut and biggest selling single worldwide (Although Disappointed actually charted higher in the UK). It was released on Factory Records (with it's catalogue number being FAC257) Lyrically, its actually a satire of Johnny Marr's bandmate Morrissey, mocking his masochistic public persona by means of being written from his perspective (Pet Shop Boys would later write a further song influenced by Morrissey; Their B-side  to Was It Worth It, called Miserablism). Musically speaking, Bernard Sumner wrote the verse and Johnny Marr wrote the chorus with both Bernard and Neil co-writing the lyrics. I do really love this song, and in particular the guitar solo, it's got this summery, relaxing quality to it that I really like. Another thing I love about it is the outro. Having said though, the 7" doesn't do it justice. It has a beautiful string solo at the very end which the 7" completely misses because it fades out before it kicks you. You can hear the string solo on the Extended Mix and also on the album version though. The chorus is also ridiculously infectious and Bernard and Neil's voices go together so well I think.Despite being released 18 months before their self titled debut album I think it fits into that album brilliantly, as I think Getting Away With It sounded rather ahead of its time. On that note though, the album didn't contain Getting Away With It on it's original release, it was added on subsequent re-releases. Even though I do prefer Disappointed, its worth noting that this song is more of a proper collaboration as Neil sings all the vocals to Disappointed. Never the less, Getting Away With It is still a great song that is also rather overlooked!