Orchestral Manoeuvres ‎– Joan Of Arc

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The first 1,000 copies were printed on a faux-antique textured card stock.
Subsequent editions were printed on standard flat card stock.

The English have long held mixed emotions about Saint Joan; she did, after all, lead the French insurgency against the English occupation of her homeland and did so at a time – the 15th Century, when Kings still claimed to be God’s instruments on earth – when such defiance was seen as the worst form of blasphemy. Compound that crime with Joan’s insistence that she herself received her instructions from God, and the so-called Maid of Orleans was doomed from the outset.

Today, the burning of heretics is looked back upon with some remorse, and the consigning of a teenaged peasant girl to the pyre is not viewed among England’s more glorious moments. Andy McCluskey obviously rues her fate, although he can’t bring himself to accept Joan for what she was. “She shouldn’t ought to promise, because it’s just pretend, I know she doesn’t mean it and she’ll leave again,” he bemoans. But she did promise – swearing to her inquisitors that the voice she heard telling her to rally troops against the English was God’s. And it wasn’t a pretense, for who would go ahead with a deliberate lie if the only conclusion was death at the stake? But McCluskey, ever the romantic, believes he could save her still, convince her through the strength of his love to “say the right words,” and finally utter the lies that would spare her the flames. And so, five centuries on, the English still struggle with Joan Of Arc’s legacy and what she represents.

Musically, “Joan of Arc” is, in a way, as confused as McCluskey’s view of the girl turned saint, with two almost opposing rhythms miraculously melded together by the strength of the gorgeous melody and sweeping synths. The tattoo of the boombox juxtaposed against the ethereal vocal, like a spirit circling overhead, can induce goosebumps, and the power of this song is almost equal to Joan’s own. Released as a single in October 1981, as a taster for the group’s forthcoming Architecture & Morality album, “Joan of Arc” song soared into the British Top Five, and floated even higher on the continent. A revelation of a single.