Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds have taken on Joy Division’s classic track ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. The band played the cover while appearing on the BBC Radio 2 Piano Room series to promote their new album Council Skies, which arrived last Friday, 2nd June.
The band didn’t go it alone: they teamed up with the BBC Concert Orchestra for the track, and together they bring an anthemic tinge to one of rock’s most gut-wrenching tracks. Watch the cover below.
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds: ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ (Joy Division Cover)
“I would play this song, this version of it, at home down the years,” Gallagher explained when asked why he’d picked the song to cover. “When they asked me to do it, I was like ‘How can I get away with that?’ Because it’s such an iconic [song] and, being from Manchester… well, this is going to be tricky.”
“Gallagher added: “”But now I’ve got my own studio, I went and did a little demo of it and I was like ‘You know what? I think I might be able to pull this off’.”
Plenty of people praised the cover – but Noel’s brother Liam was not among them. “I must once again apologise on behalf of my family for [Noel’s] piss poor and damn rite blasphemous version of joy division’s love will tear us apart tut fucking tut SORRY,” Liam wrote on Twitter on Friday.
Of course, relations between the two brothers have never been friendly since the band’s split, but they’ve been particularly prickly over the last few months. In January, Liam expressed his desire to finally reunite Oasis, and Noel – somewhat amazingly – said the idea wasn’t actually out of the realms of possibility.
Aside from his brother, lately Noel has taken aim at The 1975 singer Matty Healy, branding him a “fucking slack-jawed fuckwit“.
Further Reading
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds Share New Song and Album Details
