Transmission

I personally agree more with necktick. I think the song is more about the people in the world that just blindly follow whatever the mainstream media tells them, and because of it, the world makes no social progress, only regression. It has a bit of a "1984" feel to it, especially the last verse. "Listen to the silence, let it ring on": People in modern society are completely oblivious (the silence) to the true world outside their personal bubble of concern. This continues (let it ring on) because everyone is only self-concerned and the media is supporting conformity. "Eyes, dark gray lenses frightened of the sun": These people are turning a blind eye (dark grey lenses) to the real world (the sun) because they are afraid of it, even though there's not much to be afraid of. People have been made this way because the media scares them into obedience when the news only portrays negative events and terror, but these problems could be taken care of if we weren't afraid to face them. "We would have a fine time living in the night/Left to blind destruction/Waiting for our sight": That's an easy one. Basically, this says ignorance is bliss (fine time living in the night), but it doesn't create any progress, it only leads us to more and more problems. People can't seem to formulate their own opinions, they need to be told by the media (waiting for our sight), and are being led into their own destruction. "And we would go on as though nothing was wrong/And hide from these days we remained all alone": Once again, people ignore the real world around them and just keep going on with their daily, commercialized lives. They think society is doing better, but really it's only becoming self-absorbed and indifferent to the events of the outside world. "Staying in the same place, just staying out the time/Touching from a distance/Further all the time": This social indifference is only creating stagnation. We're repeating the same mistakes over and over, and as this keeps going on things will get worse and worse. We're viewing the world from our television screens 9touching from a distance) and if anything, we're in regression as we become more and more afraid to deal with the problems we see (further all the time). "Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio": Everyone just keeps on going with their lives, lives that are controlled by the media. They listen to the music, watch the movies, wear the clothes, pay attention to the events, and have the opinions that the media tells them to, and are joyfully oblivious to this effect. They just keep dancing to the mainstream media's whim. "Well I could call out when the going gets tough/The things that we've learned are no longer enough": Someone could speak out against of all this and say that we need to do more to right these wrongs than what we've been doing for years and years, which is letting the leaders of men (wink) solve all our problems for us while we remain self-absorbed and unworried. The problem is that no one would listen because they are blinded by the media. "No language, just sound, is all we need know": Apparently, all we need to know now is what the media tells us (sound, noise with no literal meaning). All we need is to blindly follow the blabber of the media and we will get by. We no longer need personal opinion and reasonable, meaningful thought (language) when we can be told how to live. As you can tell, this line is filled with sarcasm. "To synchronize love to the beat of the show": Even love, one of the most personal experiences and most intense, meaningful emotions that one can have, is now influenced by society and the mainstream media (the beat of the show). Love has become this artificial image that has been created by mass media, but it should be personal and unique for each and every person. This line implies that the media can get you anywhere, they can get inside your head as it has become so powerful. We no longer have full control over ourselves and even our purest thoughts. "And we could dance": Instead of thinking for ourselves, we can follow. Dance to the radio, my friends.

i fucking love this song.

this is how shit the world is:

I am 14, and for an experiment i gave a girl some lyrics (transmission by joy division) and pretended i wrote them, to which she replied:

"my god, thats shit, how badly did you rip off fall out boy"

Maybe it was just the way it was juxtaposed with images of neo-nazi's marching in 24 hour party people (where I first heard it), but I always took the chorus as meaning to turn a blind eye to all the bad stuff in the world;

all this terrible stuff is going on, but instead of addressing it he is just escaping from it, hiding in a shallow, plastic, commercial world divorced from reality - dance to the radio.

Awesome! "Listen to the silence, let it ring on. Eyes, dark grey lenses frightened of the sun. We would have a fine time living in the night, Left to blind destruction, Waiting for our sight."

I think the message of the song is that we all rather listen to music than listen to the news or something else. The important thing is that we can dance, just dance but not think about anything in our life or in our society: "No language, just sound, that's all we need know, to synchronise love to the beat of the show. And we could dance."

great song like most of Joy Division/New Order's catalogue... cept whenever i hear the word radio i sing this song to myself which can get quite annoying...

My interpretation of this song is that music can help you escape the living hell our planet has now become. It´s the same opinion i have on "The Sound Of Music" when he sings " i can see life getting harder!" I can relate to it, i isolate from everything and listen to music for hours. If more people would do that, the world would be a better place.

The song does not suck, and it's one of the simplest to figure out.

"Dance to the radio". The chorus should be the most meaningful point of all songs, and if the song contains true meaning the chorus is the key to understanding the rest of the song, this song does not suck

"eyes, dark grey lenses frightened of the sun". It's ian saying he could dance all day to the radio without vision, because he doesnt care about living in the dark, he'd walk around aimlessly listening to music all day, i have to agree with him, coz i spend a lot of my time listening to music and life is often just us walking around aimlessly in the dark, with music to guide us through the night.

agree w/ jjankechu. he's taking refuge in pure sound as last means of direct communication. In an interview he said singing he doesn't simulate anything, just puts it over exactly as it is. Someone said, "The meeting of minds in intellectual discourse is mostly an illusion." He's realized this. And that most people are happy living in the dark with no shared meaning. The radio symbolizes contact, which is almost hopeless.

Here's my two penn'orth- I don't understand why the mid seventies Bowie influence hasn't been mentioned. I think the song is recombobulated Bowie preoccupations, isolation, apocalypse, mental instability..etc..I think it's quite blatant. Let us examine the facts-

On Diamond Dogs-originally conceived as a musical based on 1984 and full of apocalyptic imagery--Rebel Rebel has the lyric 'Transmission on a Live Wire' and that's most likely why that phrase was floating around IC's head... Also, on Sound and Vision, from Low-we have 'Pale blinds drawn all day/ Nothing to do, nothing to say' 'And I will sing /waiting for the gift of sound and vision' It's essentially the same idea-Bowie's retreat was a result of fame and heroin addiction, and music was one of the consolations. It's music as a refuge from the pressures/ awfulness of the outside world.

I think Bowie lyrics are the source or inspiration of the song and if I knew mid seventies Bowie better they'd be more examples... Thank you for your time.

.. "no language, just sound is all we need know-- to synchronize love to the beat of the show" .. how can you say this song sucks