Sunday July 10, 2022 “If You Leave” Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD)
“If You Leave” was featured in the final scene of the John Hughes written movie Pretty in Pink, and OMD wrote the song specifically for the film. Unfortunately it wasn’t the original song that the band wrote for the movie but when Hughes changed the ending after OMD had written the first song they needed to revise the tune.
For those of you who remember the film, and isn’t that pretty much all of us, in Hughes’ original version Andie Walsh, no relation, played by Molly Ringwold, chooses Duckie (Jon Cryer) rather than the wimpy rich kid Blane (Andrew McCarthy) and hands up who would have preferred that original Duckie ending? I thought so.
Alright, the band name…they claim it was the most obvious choice to distinguish them from being a punk band and it was a whole lot better than the original band name consideration, Margaret Thatcher’s Afterbirth. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are considered one of the earliest, most commercially successful, and enduring of the 80s synth pop groups.
Way more popular in the UK and Europe than the US OMD have recorded twenty-five albums, thirty-six singles and have sold more than forty million records.
Stay safe and well…and what was the original song that OMD wrote for Pretty in Pink…it was called “Goddess of Love”...yeah me neither.