Welcome to the second installment of New Order: By The Numbers, where we take a deep dive into the stats of New Order in concert over the years.
As a data hoarder, I love compiling data on live concerts of my favorite bands. New Order were one of the few bands who consistently mixed up their set lists from night to night, especially in the early years of their careers.
As such, I logged all the data from all of their shows from 1980 to the present day, divided it up into album eras and tried to figure out, if you went to the next show in a particular era, what would be the most likely set list you would hear? This week we’ll present the live set list you would probably hear next from New Order if their Power, Corruption & Lies era had continued on without the introduction of Low-life tracks.
THE DATA
Spanning from February 26, 1982 until July 20, 1983, New Order played 66 shows with known set lists that we can compile data from. At their next show on December 1, 1983, they introduced “Sooner Than You Think,” and opened the Low-life era, which we will look at next time.
Over the course of these 66 shows, New Order played 28 different songs (7 singles, and 21 non-singles). On average they played 9.9 songs per show, so we’ll round that up to 10. And of those 10, they played an average of 3 singles per show. Next we determine the percentages of how often a song got played during that period based on when it was introduced to the catalog.
Looking at the singles, “Confusion” was played 77% of the time since its introduction, with “Temptation” second at roughly 74%, and “Blue Monday” not far behind at about 71%. So these 3 will take the 3 single-spots in our most likely next Power, Corruption & Lies era show. Side note, although “Murder” was a single released during this time, in classic New Order fashion, they’ve never played it live. It wasn’t until Peter Hook & The Light started touring did it see its live debut. Also of interest, in the Movement era, “Everything’s Gone Green” held the top spot, and now already it’s sadly bringing up the rear of the singles being played.
| # | % | Song |
| 1 | 76.9% | Confusion |
| 2 | 74.2% | Temptation |
| 3 | 70.7% | Blue Monday |
| 4 | 53.0% | Ceremony |
| 5 | 51.5% | Procession |
| 6 | 50.0% | Thieves Like Us |
| 7 | 47.0% | Everything’s Gone Green |
| 8 | 0.00% | Murder |
The other 21 non-single tracks ranked as such in terms of how often they were played since their introduction to the live set or catalog. We’ll take the top 7 to round out our 10 tracks needed for the most likely next Power, Corruption & Lies era show. A few points of note… one, although Bernard often says the band did not play Joy Division songs for a very long time, that depends on how you define “very long time” as they did play “Love Will Tear Us Apart” on May 9, 1983 and an increasing number of their tracks over the years early on, as we will see. Two, we also see here for the first time an album track not getting played in “Ecstasy” which, like “Murder,” would have to wait for Peter Hook & The Light to resurrect it 30 odd years down the road.
| # | % | Song |
| 1 | 68.2% | Age of Consent |
| 2 | 62.3% | 5-8-6 |
| 3 | 58.5% | Your Silent Face |
| 4 | 57.6% | Denial |
| 5 | 56.1% | Dreams Never End |
| 6 | 53.8% | Ultraviolence |
| 7 | 53.0% | Chosen Time |
| 8 | 48.5% | Hurt |
| 9 | 45.5% | In a Lonely Place |
| 10 | 45.5% | We All Stand |
| 11 | 37.5% | The Village |
| 12 | 36.4% | Senses |
| 13 | 36.4% | Leave Me Alone |
| 14 | 30.3% | Truth |
| 15 | 30.0% | Lonesome Tonight |
| 16 | 22.7% | ICB |
| 17 | 19.7% | The Him |
| 18 | 7.6% | Cries & Whispers |
| 19 | 5.9% | Love Will Tear Us Apart |
| 20 | 3.0% | Sister Ray |
| 21 | 2.2% | When I’m With You |
After that, we do our GRE logic puzzles and place the songs based on their quadrant stats and percentile scores. By looking at overwhelming data indicators, such as “Temptation” being played 69% of the time in the 4th quadrant, and having the latest percentile of any of the 10 songs (73% placement percentile). All that means, of these 10 songs, it’s being played last.
| # | Song | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
| 1 | Your Silent Face | 50% | 21% | 17% | 13% |
| 2 | Ultraviolence | 39% | 28% | 19% | 14% |
| 3 | Age of Consent | 33% | 3% | 17% | 47% |
| 4 | Chosen Time | 21% | 53% | 18% | 9% |
| 5 | Dreams Never End | 26% | 37% | 18% | 18% |
| 6 | Denial | 0% | 16% | 39% | 45% |
| 7 | 5-8-6 | 9% | 15% | 24% | 52% |
| 8 | Confusion | 20% | 5% | 15% | 60% |
| 9 | Blue Monday | 17% | 7% | 3% | 72% |
| 10 | Temptation | 14% | 12% | 4% | 69% |
Then, you add in songs to the placement based on the data. While 6 songs were candidates for their 4th quadrant, only 2-3 can fit, so you go with those which were most predominantly there, “Blue Monday” and “Temptation.” For the others, you look at their secondary quadrant to find a home. Of the 10 songs in this set, 7 are in their dominant quadrant, and 3 are in their secondary (“Age of Consent”, “Denial”, and “5-8-6”). For “Denial” and “5-8-6,” their dominant quadrants were Q4, but there was too much competition for those 2-3 slots with songs with higher play rates, so they need to shift down to their secondary quadrant in Q3. “Age of Consent” was also a candidate for Q4, but like the others, needs to be moved down to its secondary quadrant where it can serve as the bridge between Q1 and Q2.
POWER RANKINGS
A side data set I look at as these go on is: what is a song’s PRI (Power Ranking Index) compared to the others? It’s a complicated formula, but basically it tries to determine how strong a song is based on the frequency the band plays the song (which indicates how much they like the song internally and how well they think it goes over with the audience), while also taking into account how many songs they played in each set, how many songs were available to choose from, and how many singles vs. non-singles are being played, etc. Now that we are onto the 2nd album, we start to factor in if songs get brought back from previous album tours, consecutive tour selection, etc. As such, singles and non-singles are graded differently as one expects singles to get played more than the non-singles. One also expects new album tracks to have a higher chance of being played live than a previous release’s album tracks because bands tend to promote new material. Below are how the PRI stands as the Power, Corruption & Lies era draws to a close.
| # | PRI | Singles | Position Change |
| 1 | 3.42 | Temptation | +2 |
| 2 | 2.77 | Ceremony | NC |
| 3 | 2.75 | Everything’s Gone Green | -2 |
| 4 | 2.62 | Procession | NC |
| 5 | 1.34 | Confusion | New |
| 6 | 1.27 | Blue Monday | New |
| 7 | 0.71 | Thieves Like Us | New |
| 8 | 0.00 | Murder | New |
| # | PRI | Non-Singles | Position Change |
| 1 | 5.42 | Denial | NC |
| 2 | 5.29 | Dreams Never End | NC |
| 3 | 4.61 | Chosen Time | +2 |
| 4 | 4.09 | Hurt | +4 |
| 5 | 4.07 | In a Lonely Place | +2 |
| 6 | 3.96 | Senses | -3 |
| 7 | 3.57 | Truth | -3 |
| 8 | 2.46 | The Him | -2 |
| 9 | 2.36 | ICB | NC |
| 10 | 2.15 | Age of Consent | New |
| 11 | 2.14 | Your Silent Face | New |
| 12 | 1.90 | 5-8-6 | New |
| 13 | 1.56 | Ultraviolence | New |
| 14 | 1.37 | We All Stand | New |
| 15 | 1.25 | Leave Me Alone | New |
| 16 | 1.10 | The Village | New |
| 17 | 0.97 | Lonesome Tonight | New |
| 18 | 0.80 | Cries & Whispers | -5 |
| 19 | 0.56 | Doubts Even Here | -8 |
| 20 | 0.36 | Mesh | -9 |
| 21 | 0.24 | Love Will Tear Us Apart* | New |
| 22 | 0.18 | Sister Ray | -7 |
| 23 | 0.05 | Homage | -10 |
| 24 | 0.05 | When I’m With You | New |
| 25 | 0.03 | Hour | -11 |
| 26 | 0.00 | Ecstasy | New |
A few notes: 1) As mentioned, “Murder” and “Ecstasy” have never made the live New Order set list to date. 2) Four songs disappeared from the live set list post Movement: a) “Doubts Even Here,” b) “Mesh,” c) “Homage,” and d) “Hour.” Their PRI cumulative point totals are locked at this point unless New Order miraculously decides to revive them for a future concert. Post Power, Corruption & Lies, 3 more of these songs will disappear for seemingly good.
Thank you for reading and be on the lookout for the next installment of New Order: By The Numbers!