4.23.2025

New Order - Ceremony

"Ceremony" has to be one of my favourite songs of all time.

This is originally a Joy Division song and it's one of the last songs Ian Curtis wrote. The song feels uplifting but there's a melancholy tone to it that fills me with ambivalence. I interpret the song as you can either try to get yourself up when you're in a low place or you're already doing your best to try to make things work but you feel yourself fail.

I was reading how the band composed this song weeks before Ian died as they tried to help him. But that didn't happened and he passed away. The fact that the remaining members of Joy Division formed New Order and recorded this song makes me emotional.

It has been a special song to me for years and it'll continue to be so.