Background
"Vienna" is a synthpop ballad. Unusually for its genre, two of its most distinctive sounds are those of conventional instruments - the dramatic grand piano in the verses and chorus, and the viola solo in the middle of the song. Other sounds include a solid synth bass line played on a Minimoog, a Yamaha string synthesiser and a Roland CR-78 drum machine The song is regarded as a staple of the synthpop genre that was popularised in the early 1980s. The song takes its inspiration from the 1948 film The Third Man, which is based around the Austrian capital Vienna. Midge Ure is said to have been influenced by The Walker Brothers' 1978 single "The Electrician".
Read more about this topic: Vienna (Ultravox Song)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)