Five pioneering Roxy Music songs that reimagined modern music
The word ‘pioneer’ is banded around a lot within the world of art and music, often undeservingly. However, there aren’t many other words that can accurately describe the importance or inventiveness of Roxy Music. Formed by Bryan Ferry in 1970, the band always operated by their own metric, paying little attention to rising trends within the industry or giving much importance to ideas of commercial appeal. Roxy Music were true originals, and perhaps that is why their legacy still looms so large decades later.
At the time that Roxy Music first came together, the rock music landscape of Great Britain was dominated by self-aggrandising progressive rock, overtly masculine hard rock, and the remaining remnants of 1960s psychedelic. There was not much to appeal to the artistic mind of Bryan Ferry, who yearned for something a little different; a bit more experimental. Ultimately, the advent of glam rock provided Ferry and Roxy Music with their ‘in’ to crafting music, but the band did not stay in one stylistic place for too long.
If you look across Roxy Music’s broad discography, you will see clearly that the group never bowed down to genre conventions. Each and every record they made stood out entirely on its own, separating the band from the legions of other groups attempting to climb the charts. Of course, with musicians like Brian Eno on board, it was something of an inevitability that Roxy Music would pursue individualism, but their total reinvention of modern music at the time made them one of the most important and enduring groups of the decade.
The cult following amassed by the group all seemed to pursue music and art themselves, with Roxy Music offering a lot of inspiration to scenes like post-punk, new wave, and the new romantics. Virtually every song recorded by Roxy Music – particularly during their early period from 1970 to 1976 – transformed or subverted ideas of modern music in ways which had never been seen before. However, there are a handful of tracks recorded by the group whose influence on modern music can still be felt today, all these years later.
Roxy Music songs that reimagined modern music:
5. ‘Virginia Plain’ (1972)
Where better to start our list than the first song Roxy Music ever released? In the summer of 1972, a strange new sound rocketed up the singles charts, and the cultural sector of the UK would never be quite the same again. Driven by the futuristic synthesisers of Brian Eno and Ferry’s distinctive vocal performance, ‘Virginia Plain’ opened 1970s audiences up to an entirely different world.
At the time, there was nothing in glam rock or elsewhere that sounded akin to this track, and it would go on to have an incredible effect on future artists. Squeeze, for instance, used the narrative structure of the single, lacking any kind of chorus or typical pop music structure, for their hit ‘Up the Junction’ years later. Ferry had destroyed the conventions and apparent rules of recording a successful pop or rock track with ‘Virginia Plain’, and yet, it was a colossal success anyway.
4. ‘2HB’ (1972)
‘Virginia Plain’, as the band’s debut single, introduced the group to mainstream audiences. However, the single came out after the band’s eponymous debut album, which first established the wide-reaching diversity of Roxy Music’s sound. The final track on side one, ‘2HB’, offers perhaps the best single encapsulation of the record as a whole. It is a beautiful marriage of the old, the new, and the futuristic.
‘2HB’ seamlessly blended Ferry’s jazz influences as a homage to Humphrey Bogart and the golden age of cinema, with the definite marking of progressive rock. The track seemed to unite a very small minority of people who understood how far ahead of their time Roxy Music was. At the same time, it alienates both fans of glam and fans of progressive rock by operating just outside the conventions of those respective genres.
3. ‘Strictly Confidential’ (1973)
How many other groups, within the frustratingly macho landscape of 1970s rock, would build an entire song around a strangely gothic oboe? That is the power and experimentalism of Roxy Music and ‘Strictly Confidential,’ from their second album, For Your Pleasure. Although the song did not have the same impact as other inclusions on the record, like ‘In Every Dream Home a Heartache’, for instance, its individualistic quality helped to set Roxy Music apart from all else at the time.
The band’s ability to embrace different avenues of expression and areas of instrumentation that other groups of a similar ilk might not be incredibly ahead of its time. In later music scenes, parameters and genre conventions became somewhat blurred; Roxy Music certainly had a part to play in blurring those lines, creating an entirely new and original sound that transformed modern music.
2. ‘Editions of You’ (1973)
Sticking with For Your Pleasure, Ferry and company also deliver an adrenaline-fueled and wonderfully weird track in the form of ‘Editions of You’. Subverting expectations of progressive rock, the synthesisers on ‘Editions of You’ are pitched against a blaring saxophone and driving bassline. If you listen to this song followed by some early UK punk rock, like X-Ray Spex, the two are not all that dissimilar, except for the fact that ‘Editions of You’ came out years prior to the advent of punk.
In many ways, this is one of the more straightforward rock songs Roxy Music ever recorded. However, as with all their work, the moment you scratch beneath the surface, you are granted a bizarre and unparalleled experience. The song still sounds ahead of its time now, and it came out over 50 years ago.
1. ‘Love Is The Drug’ (1975)
Again, on a surface level, ‘Love Is The Drug’ might seem like one of Roxy Music’s more digestible efforts. It is, in essence, a sultry love song – which seemed to be the preferred songwriting theme of Bryan Ferry throughout much of Roxy Music’s discography. However, there are a wealth of different influences that went into the making of ‘Love Is The Drug,’ not least the impact of Caribbean patois, which certainly would not have featured in many other charting singles in 1975.
The importance of the song lies largely within its infectious, inventive bassline. In fact, the bass on this track was so original that it first inspired disco pioneer Nile Rodgers to construct the song ‘Good Times’ by Chic. You could argue, therefore, that Roxy Music predicted the rise and inherent bass sound of disco music. Taking that a step further, ‘Good Times’ ended up being very important in the development of hip-hop and sampling, adding another claim to Roxy Music’s impact on reimagining modern music.
