Vienna

"Vienna" is a song by British new wave band Ultravox from their 1980 fourth studio album of the same name. It was released as the album's third single on 9 January 1981 by Chrysalis Records and features Midge Ure singing the lead vocal. The song is regarded as a staple of the synth-pop genre that was popularised in the early 1980s. The song was also performed at the 1985 Live Aid concert in Wembley Stadium. It remains Ultravox's signature song, being their most commercially successful release and is often performed live by Ure in solo performances. Background "Vienna" was written in January 1980. The song features a dramatic grand piano in the verses and chorus, and a viola solo in the middle of the song. Other sounds include a solid synth bass line played on a MiniMoog, an Elka string synthesiser and a Roland CR-78 drum machine. The drum machine pattern created by Warren Cann was the basis of the song. Then, Cann and the classically trained Billy Currie together wanted to create something that might sound like it had been written by a late-19th-century romantic composer, so they started creating the basic chords and sounds of the song, and the romantic viola solo was influenced by German composer Max Reger. The lyrics, which are about a brief love affair in the city of Vienna, were quickly written by Midge Ure. According to Currie, Ure was hesitant about the overly classical romantic feel of the orchestration, and said: "This means nothing to me", to which the producer Conny Plank replied: "Well, sing that then." Ure said that he had in his mind only the line "The feeling is gone, this means nothing to me – oh Vienna!" when he went into studio. Then he wrote the vocal part while bass player Chris Cross started playing some bass lines with his synthesizer.