Man Made

This song sounds like a journey through time, not because of its futuristic synthesizers, but due to how its structure plays with the unexpected. The track starts with a rhythm that seems to repeat, but in reality, it moves in a seven-beat measure, something that gives it that hypnotic and distinct air unlike almost everything that sounded in 1982. It’s as if the band had taken a loop and stretched it just enough so it wouldn’t fit into any known mold, yet never lost the catchy melody that holds it together. This detail, which goes unnoticed on first listen, is what makes it feel like you’re discovering something new every time it plays.

They recorded it in Liverpool, in a borrowed studio with equipment that wasn’t the most modern of the era, but that didn’t stop them from creating a sound that would end up defining much of the decade. Mike Howlett handled the production, and Mike Shipley polished every technical detail, though the final result has the freshness of something made without filters. The album it belongs to, Photograph, was released in April of that year and ended up being one of those records that not only sold well but left a mark: it reached the Top 10 in the United States and even had a single, I Ran (So Far Away), that climbed the charts in Australia and New Zealand. But this particular song, Man Made, with its five minutes and forty seconds, is the one that best captures that mix of science fiction and melancholy the band explored in every track.