Trivia / Power, Corruption & Lies

• Better Export for You: The initial US CD and cassette releases add on the non-album single "Blue Monday" and its B-side, "The Beach", as bonus tracks, preemptively avoiding the confusion UK buyers had over the highly popular songs not being on the album.
• Breakthrough Hit: Despite having no singles, Power, Corruption & Lies established New Order as a worthy successor to Joy Division.
• Completely Different Title: The Japanese release is titled 権力の美学 (Aesthetics of Power)
• Creator Recovery: In an episode of the band's Transmissions interview series, Bernard Sumner noted that Power, Corruption & Lies was made when the band were in a far happier place compared to when they were recording Movement, and that the recording atmosphere was far more fun and mutually collaborative than before, which is what led to this album being more dance-driven and far less bleak compared to its predecessor.
• Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • Peter Hook described Power, Corruption & Lies in a 2020 interview as having had the best production of any of New Order's albums in his opinion, a stark contrast to his ambivalence towards Movement.
  • Bernard Sumner specifically singled out "Your Silent Face" as one of his personal favorite New Order songs.
• Cut Song: "Murder" was recorded with the intent of putting it on the album, only for it to be removed from the final release. It would instead be put out as a non-album single in Belgium and Japan; the band riffed on this by featuring the text "WHERE'S MURDER?" in the runout groove of certain LP copies of the album.
• Hitless Hit Album: In its original configuration, the album lacks "Blue Monday." New Order had a habit of releasing popular non-album singles, a practice that stretched back to their days as Joy Division and had some precedent in the 1960s British music scene (as fans of The Beatles will readily attest); this is especially noticeable since the cover has the same secret code and floppy disk motif of the "Blue Monday" 12-inch. As a result of just how popular "Blue Monday" became, it and its B-side, "The Beach", were retroactively added to all American cassette releases of the album as well as Qwest Records' CD release in the same region. No singles were taken from the album either; despite this, album tracks like "Age of Consent" and "Your Silent Face" became fan favorites and the album topped the U.K. indie charts.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition:
  • In 1986, Factory released a cassette box set that had the album artwork as a postcard, a nod to how Peter Saville originally acquired the cover painting. Factory also released a conventional cassette sleeve for the album.
  • In October 2020, the album received a Definitive Edition Boxed Set in the vein of the one issued for Movement the previous year. Similarly to the Movement DE, the Power, Corruption & Lies package contains the original album on CD and vinyl, two bonus CDs full of demos, outtakes, and a radio session with iconic DJ John Peel, two DVDs of live performances and TV sessions from 1982-1984, and a 48-page coffee table book about the album.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • "5 8 6", "Ultraviolence", and "Blue Monday" were all based on elements from "Prime 5 8 6", a 22.5-minute-long sequencer jam created to score the Haçienda's opening night in May of 1982; the first and last thirds of it were also included on Touch Records' cassette magazine Feature Mist, retitled "Video 5 8 6", with the middle portion later included on a 1997 sampler CD on the same label. The song wouldn't be officially released in its original configuration until later in 1997, when Touch included the full uncut recording as a 12" and CD single, again under the "Video 5 8 6" title.
  • As revealed during a Twitter listening party in 2020, the drum track in "Age of Consent" is recycled from "Love Will Tear Us Apart", with some slight modifications.
• Throw It In!: How the album cover came about; Peter Saville picked up a postcard of Henri Fantin-Latour's "A Basket of Roses" while visiting the National Gallery, having intended to use a Renaissance-era "dark prince" portrait for the album cover to tie in with its Machiavellian title. However, after a fruitless search, Saville's wife saw the postcard and jokingly asked if that was going to be the album cover, to which Saville thought Sure, Let's Go with That.
• Trope Codifier: Just like how Murmur by R.E.M. laid the groundwork for the American side of Alternative Rock, so too did this album codify much of the British alternative scene. Namely, this album established the much more abstract and aloof tone of British alt rock compared to the more esoteric direction of American artists and encouraged a greater use of electronics and more harmonious union with Synth-Pop compared to the movement's counterparts west of the Atlantic; The Smiths were one of the only British alternative rock acts to follow the same outline as American acts, with their guitar-heavy sound and anti-commercial stance.
• Working Title:
  • According to biographer Mark Johnson, the album was recorded under the title How Does It Feel, after a line in "Blue Monday", only for the name to be discarded when the band learned that Crass already released a single called "How Does It Feel (To Be the Mother of a Thousand Dead)?"
  • "The Village" was originally called "New Fast One"; it was renamed as a Shout-Out to The Prisoner.
  • "Your Silent Face" was originally called "K.W.1." — short for "The Kraftwerk One" — thanks to it being New Order's attempt at mimicking the German Synth-Pop outfit's style.
  • "Ultraviolence" was originally written as "Who Killed My Father".
  • "Ecstasy" and "Leave Me Alone" were both intended to be called "Only the Lonely" at various points during production.

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