YMMV / Substance (New Order Album)

• Awesome Music: The wealth of 12-inch mixes and non-album singles is one reason critics rate Substance as one of the greatest compilation albums ever.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In the middle of the "Bizarre Love Triangle" video the music stops and there's a black-and-white scene (it looks like a movie clip, but was actually made specifically for the video) of a man and a woman having a conversation about reincarnation. And then the music video proper just picks up right where it left off.
• Broken Base: There's one over which version of "Sub-Culture" is the best. Most prefer the original version on Low-Life, however there is a significant minority that prefers the single mix that appears on this compilation. There's also a smaller third camp that prefer the Razormaid/Sarm West mix that came packaged with an issue of the magazine Record Mirror.
• Eclipsed by the Remix: "Bizarre Love Triangle" is better known through the 12" mix included on this album than the original version on Brotherhood.
• Epic Riff:
  • One writer called the intro to "Blue Monday" "the most recognizable sonic signature of the decade."
  • The opening bass riff to "Bizarre Love Triangle". Okay, it is technically from a synthesizer, but it is still immediately recognizable nonetheless.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Substance 1987, after the cover art, thanks to the existence of the Joy Division compilation of the same name; it's even the title the New Order album goes under on Wikipedia.
  • While the liner notes officially append the subtitle "New Version" to each of them, the re-recorded versions of "Temptation" and "Confusion" typically go by "Temptation '87" and "Confusion '87" among fans to keep them in line with the band's later archival remixes.
• Older Than They Think: Elements of the "Confusion '87" version, including the "WWRL" and "Ra-tata-tatata-ta-ta-hey!" samples, were already present in live performances of the song from several years earlier.
• Song Association: After being featured in the infamous Shock Site video "1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick" (which depicts the graphic real-life murder of a Chinese exchange student in Canada), many are unable to shake off the thoughts of rather squicky imagery in connection to "True Faith". Ironic, seeing as how the song was previously featured in American Psycho, itself guilty of causing the public to associate various '80s pop hits with scenes of murder and debauchery.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The single mix of "Sub-Culture", featured on this compilation, was widely derided by a large chunk of fans as overproduced, to the extent where popular rumor claimed that its barebones packaging was due to Peter Saville hating the remix too much to design a sleeve for it (in actuality, Saville was simply never commissioned).

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