YMMV / Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

• Awesome Music: "Enola Gay", "Joan of Arc (Maid of Orleans)", and all of their output up to Crush.
• Fridge Brilliance: Why is Junk Culture titled as so? Because that's what the entire album is defined by, shallow pop songs which are in essence, a symbol of "junk" culture.
• Memetic Mutation: Andy's dancing during their 80's concerts.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • "Dancing" from their first album, and "I Betray my Friends" as a B-side from their early single "Red Frame/White Light".
  • "White Trash" from Junk Culture, which is a slightly upbeat tune about domestic violence. The lyrics were vulgar enough to get attention from reviewers of the album.
• Signature Song: "Enola Gay", followed more or less closely by "Electricity", "Souvenir", "Joan of Arc", "Maid of Orleans", "Locomotion", "Sailing on the Seven Seas" and "Tesla Girls". Or, in the US, it's "If You Leave".
  • As for albums: Architecture & Morality, Dazzle Ships, Organisation, and their Self-Titled Album. Or, in the US, Crush.
• Seasonal Rot: While Junk Culture and Crush are retrospectively respected among the music community, it marked a "beginning of the end" phase as the band was no longer at the height of their earlier indie output and had been strongarmed into only churning out radio-friendly material as a result of the poor response towards Dazzle Ships. By the time The Pacific Age was released, the band had lost most of their relevance in the electronic music scene and were considered nothing more than washed-up trend-chasers.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The chorus of "Dreaming" sounds oddly like the Space Harrier theme.
• Vindicated by History:
  • Dazzle Ships was initially met with a downright hostile response from fans and critics who saw it as opaque, pretentious and/or self-indulgent, but as time went on the album's abstract, avant-garde style became more and more appreciated, to the point where it's now considered OMD's creative high point.
  • Also the band itself — they suffered a critical backlash both from Dazzle Ships (too experimental) and their subsequent albums (too commercial) but the 2000s reissues and subsequent reformation and well-regarded new material restored their reputation.
  • Many of their later pop-oriented albums like Junk Culture and Crush, despite being highly popular in the UK and US were hated by the music press due to them seeing it as an overreaction to the poor reception of the avant-garde Dazzle Ships, with the band being accused of trend-following. Of course, during the 2000s and 2010s they're hailed in some quarters as the band's best works, perhaps even trumping Architecture & Morality.
  • Despite being hated by the English press at the time, "Tesla Girls" was one of their most successful club hits and was popular overseas.

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