I must say I agree with the OP on this one: I've always wondered why it wasn't released as a single at all. It was a no-brainer: a strong, accessible pop song with a catchy melody, it would have been an obvious choice. It was covered at least twice in 1984 (by La Toya Jackson and Cheynne), so others saw potential in it soon after. IDK, it was a maybe bit ahead of its time in terms of synthpop and WB felt it wouldn't work, but on the other hand The Human League's Don't You Want Me blew up the charts in late 81/early 82, so they could have seen an opportunity.

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On the other hand the R&B target audience argument mentioned above makes sense. It's easy to forget how segregated music was in the US in those days. But then they should have released it at least in Europe, as they did with the punkish Sexuality: UK would probably have been quite receptive to it given what was going on there musically at the time.

ShaggyDog said:

TrivialPursuit said:

You are misunderstanding it. I meant that both songs did things in music that hadn't been done before, and were ahead of their time. I wasn't comparing them directly against each other.

ITAT really made the idea of gated reverb something that people sat up and paid real attention to, even though Peter Gabriel (or was it Bowie?) accidentally discovered it a few years before.

"Private Joy" was ahead of its time in how Prince put the Linn through guitar pedals and just the sound of it overall.

It was the Low album by David Bowie from 1977 that first had that big drum sound. The producer, Tony Visconti, was playing around with a piece of equipment called the Eventide Harmonizer that could pitch shift the sound of the Snare drum downwards depending on how hard the drummer hit it. Viscoti described it to Bowie and Brian Eno by saying that it "f---S with the fabric of time"!

That doesn't sound right. Gated reverb isn't a "big drum sound". Hell, if someone wants big drum sound, listen to "Kasmir" from Zeppelin.

I remember the story about the microphone in the control room being left open when recording drums. (the mic that an engineer or producer uses to talk to the artist in the booth or recording area.) It was accidentally left open, a drum track recorded and they realized the sound.

Edit: found it - In 1980 it was used on Gabriel's "Intruder" (3rd solo record). Ironically, it was created by his producer and Phil Collins (the latter of which would later make it much more famous with "In The Air Tonight").

There was a group in 1979 that allegedly used it, but I'm not sure to what extent or as much as Gabriel used it.