This blog has had its fair share of OMD songs, its true. But personally I’m a sucker for their music – as I’ve blogged earlier I love the way that these little synthpop riffs translate to the uke.
And if a song were ever to be defined by its riff, this has to be one of those. Coming from their left-field, avant-garde electronic roots (beyond the singles, there is lots of weirdness across their back-catalogue, at least until the career jolt that was Dazzle Ships), Souvenir could be perceived as something of a sell-out – a lush, romantic ballad, voiced by the softer tones of Paul Humphries, a sure-fire attempt to make a huge hit. And in many ways it is those things – certainly it became one of their biggest selling singles, and most recognised recordings. Yet this is a far-from-standard hit-single – just two verses, no chorus to speak of (the riff performs that function, an approach that their previous hit, the class Enola Gay, had also done), an opening 10-seconds of just sampled choral sounds (there’s an interesting piece here on how that was achieved).
But for all that, it is a beautiful piece of music that revealed a softer side of these machine loving pioneers (previous songs having paid homage to telephone boxes, nuclear bombs and electricity), and which will immediately make those of a certain age go all wistful, transported back to another time and another place.
So here is the songsheet. The song itself is simple and straightforward – two verses, three chords, and then it’s gone. I’ve tabbed all of the riffs as best I can – they’re all variations on a similar theme, with some subtle variances throughout the song – and tried to indicate where the various sections fall. I’ve also transposed the song down a semi-tone (from F# to F) just to simplify the playing – capo 1 to play along with the original. Enjoy!
