Why Vienna? There was a decaying elegance about it. Ure explained: 'You've gone to this beautiful place, met someone and vowed it is going to continue – and, of course, it doesn't. The song was not inspired by The Third Man, as another urban legend suggests, but was a love song written in sound bites which convey a feeling rather than tell a linear story. Urban legend has it that lead singer Midge Ure was uncomfortable with the classical feel to the arrangement and lamented: 'This means nothing to me.' The producer replied, 'Well, sing that then' and allegedly this made it into the famous chorus 'This means nothing to me - oh Vienna.' However, Ure denied this on his twitter feed (2021). That was why I did a violin solo that was overly vibrato and romantic.' We'd been listening to music by this old German composer called Max Reger. 'I said to the guys I was keen to do something that sounded like the late-19th-century romantics, like Grieg and Elgar. 'I wanted to use my classical training,' he told The Guardian.

Keyboards player Billy Currie added a piano part and played a violin solo. Except for finessing the middle section of the song, once we were in the studio that was basically it. It all clicked in a few hours and we ironed out the rough spots the next day. I had a drum machine and synth pad pattern in mind that I'd wanted to do something with and played that. Drummer and backing vocalist Warren Cann recalled: 'The song came together very quickly.

The minimalist and bleak sound was due to the synth pads, a Roland drum machine and German producer, Conny Plank, who had worked with Kraftwerk. Okay, it was on the NME chart and not the official one used by Top Of The Pops, but at least it provides some consolation for Ultravox fans left fuming at the time. 2 for four weeks in early 1981, it was infamously denied its place in pop history by a novelty record so dire that we refuse to name it. This is unsurprising because few singles are as renowned for being unjustly robbed of the coveted No. 2 hit of all time, at least according to a poll of BBC Radio 2 listeners in 2012. UK picture sleeve, UK labels The Story Behind The Song

Youtube ultravox vienna