Welcome to the third 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 Low-life era had continued on without the introduction of Brotherhood tracks.
THE DATA
The Low-life era ran from December 1, 1983 when they debuted “Sooner Than You Think” to April 10, 1985, which included only 44 shows with known set lists. At their next show a week later on April 17th, they debuted their first Brotherhood track, “As It Is When It Was.” It was probably their most prolific songwriting period so this Low-life era is much shorter than what the Brotherhood era will turn out to be.
Over the course of these 44 shows, New Order played 36 different songs (9 singles, and 27 non-singles). On average they played 10.8 songs per show, so we’ll round that up to 11. And of those 11, they played an average of 5 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, “The Perfect Kiss” was played 78% of the time since its introduction, with “Temptation” second at roughly 77%, “Sub-Culture” third at 75%, “Blue Monday” fourth at about 73%, and finally “Confusion” fifth at almost 64%. So these 5 will take the 5 single-spots in our most likely next Low-life era show.
| # | % | Song |
| 1 | 78.1% | The Perfect Kiss |
| 2 | 77.3% | Temptation |
| 3 | 75.0% | Sub-Culture |
| 4 | 72.7% | Blue Monday |
| 5 | 63.6% | Confusion |
| 6 | 56.8% | Thieves Like Us |
| 7 | 45.5% | Ceremony |
| 8 | 40.9% | Everything’s Gone Green |
| 9 | 18.2% | Procession |
| 10 | 0.0% | Murder |
The other 27 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 6 to round out our 11 tracks needed for the most likely next Low-life era show. And again the band played”Love Will Tear Us Apart” two more times, and “Decades” twice in May, 1984.
| # | % | Song |
| 1 | 87.5% | This Time Of Night |
| 2 | 79.5% | Age Of Consent |
| 3 | 71.4% | Love Vigilantes |
| 4 | 69.2% | Sunrise |
| 5 | 54.5% | Your Silent Face |
| 6 | 52.4% | Face Up |
| 7 | 50.0% | Elegia |
| 8 | 47.7% | 5-8-6 |
| 9 | 40.0% | Let’s Go |
| 10 | 34.1% | Sooner Than You Think |
| T-11 | 29.5% | The Village |
| T-11 | 29.5% | Leave Me Alone |
| T-13 | 27.3% | Denial |
| T-13 | 27.3% | Hurt |
| T-15 | 22.7% | Chosen Time |
| T-15 | 22.7% | Dreams Never End |
| T-15 | 22.7% | Lonesome Tonight |
| 18 | 20.5% | In A Lonely Place |
| 19 | 18.2% | Ultraviolence |
| 20 | 13.6% | We All Stand |
| T-21 | 11.4% | ICB |
| T-21 | 11.4% | Senses |
| 23 | 10.0% | Skullcrusher |
| T-24 | 9.1% | Sister Ray |
| T-24 | 9.1% | The Him |
| 26 | 6.3% | Decades |
| 27 | 4.5% | Love Will Tear Us Apart |
After that, we do the quadrant puzzle and set the placement by looking for overwhelming data indicators. Because there are to be 11 tracks in this set, it’s easiest to look for 2 song quadrants with 3 bridge songs between them.
| # | Song | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
| 1 | Love Vigilantes | 60% | 0% | 40% | 0% |
| 2 | The Perfect Kiss | 32% | 4% | 8% | 56% |
| 3 | Sunrise | 22% | 11% | 6% | 61% |
| 4 | This Time Of Night | 29% | 43% | 29% | 0% |
| 5 | Your Silent Face | 17% | 54% | 17% | 13% |
| 6 | Temptation | 15% | 24% | 9% | 53% |
| 7 | Sub-Culture | 0% | 33% | 67% | 0% |
| 8 | Confusion | 18% | 14% | 43% | 25% |
| 9 | Face Up | 18% | 9% | 27% | 45% |
| 10 | Age Of Consent | 9% | 9% | 20% | 63% |
| 11 | Blue Monday | 13% | 6% | 6% | 75% |
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 “Age Of Consent.” For the others, you look at their secondary quadrant to find a home. Of the 11 songs in this set, 7 are in their dominant quadrant, and 4 are in their secondary (“The Perfect Kiss”, “Sunrise”, “Temptation”, and “Face Up”). For all of these, 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. The song in these with the strongest secondary quadrant was “The Perfect Kiss” at 32% in Q1. The remaining 3 can serve as bridges between quadrants. “Sunrise” to bridge Q1 and Q2, “Temptation” to bridge Q2 and Q3, and “Face Up” to bridge Q3 and Q4.
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 onto the 3rd album, we continue 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 Low-life era draws to a close.
| # | PRI | Singles | Position Change |
| 1 | 7.94 | Temptation | NC |
| 2 | 5.22 | Ceremony | NC |
| 3 | 4.86 | Everything’s Gone Green | NC |
| 4 | 4.16 | Blue Monday | +2 |
| 5 | 3.83 | Confusion | NC |
| 6 | 3.61 | Procession | -2 |
| 7 | 2.87 | Thieves Like Us | NC |
| 8 | 1.71 | Sub-Culture | New |
| 9 | 1.64 | The Perfect Kiss | New |
| 10 | 0.00 | Murder | -2 |
| # | PRI | Non-Singles | Position Change |
| 1 | 9.79 | Age of Consent | +9 |
| 2 | 9.03 | Denial | -1 |
| 3 | 8.04 | Dreams Never End | -1 |
| 4 | 7.75 | Hurt | NC |
| 5 | 7.52 | Chosen Time | -2 |
| 6 | 7.09 | In a Lonely Place | -1 |
| 7 | 6.99 | Your Silent Face | +4 |
| 8 | 5.95 | 5-8-6 | +4 |
| 9 | 5.44 | Senses | -3 |
| 10 | 4.12 | This Time Of Night | New |
| 11 | 3.96 | Leave Me Alone | +4 |
| 12 | 3.77 | ICB | -3 |
| 13 | 3.65 | The Him | -5 |
| 14 | 3.57 | Truth | -7 |
| 15 | 3.52 | The Village | +1 |
| 16 | 3.49 | Sunrise | New |
| 17 | 3.26 | Love Vigilantes | New |
| 18 | 3.09 | Lonesome Tonight | -1 |
| 19 | 3.08 | Ultraviolence | -6 |
| 20 | 2.73 | We All Stand | -6 |
| 21 | 2.36 | Elegia | New |
| 22 | 2.30 | Face Up | New |
| 23 | 1.74 | Let’s Go | New |
| 24 | 1.73 | Sooner Than You Think | New |
| 25 | 1.27 | Sister Ray | -3 |
| 26 | 0.80 | Cries & Whispers | -8 |
| T-27 | 0.56 | Love Will Tear Us Apart* | -6 |
| T-27 | 0.56 | Doubts Even Here | -9 |
| 29 | 0.37 | Skullcrusher | New |
| 30 | 0.36 | Mesh | -10 |
| 31 | 0.27 | Decades* | New |
| T-32 | 0.05 | Homage | -9 |
| T-32 | 0.05 | When I’m With You | -9 |
| 34 | 0.03 | Hour | -9 |
| 35 | 0.00 | Ecstasy | -9 |
One note: Three songs disappeared from the live set list post Power, Corruption & Lies: a) “Truth,” b) “Cries & Whispers,” and c) the cover “When I’m With You.” Their PRI cumulative point totals are locked at this point unless New Order miraculously decides to revive them for a future concert.
Thank you for reading and be on the lookout for the next installment of New Order: By The Numbers!