Magazine released nine singles between 1978 and 1981. Only two of them cracked the Top 75. The first was the debut Shot By Both Sides which made its way up to #41. The only other success story came via the eighth single, which reached #54 in July 1980.
mp3: Magazine – Sweetheart Contract
It was a bit of a strange one. Two previous singles from The Correct Use of Soap had gone nowhere. A later non-album single also flopped. And yet, this one, released a few months after the album had enjoyed its brief four-week stay in the charts, made a small splash.
I’m thinking it probably had a lot to do with the fact that initial copies came with an additional, free 7″ as a double pack, offering up three live tracks that had been recorded in May 1980 at the Russell Club in Manchester.
mp3: Magazine – Feed The Enemy (live)
mp3: Magazine – Twenty Years Ago (live)
mp3: Magazine – Shot By Both Sides (live)
The most interesting one is the very different version of Feed The Enemy.
The original, as found on the album Secondhand Daylight, is a slow-paced affair, extending out to almost six minutes in length, in which Howard Devoto seems to carefully and cautiously select his words over a tune packed with anxiety and menace. The live version comes in at just under four minutes and is a raucous new-wave take on things played at 100mph, driven along in particular by Barry Adamson‘s frantic bass and John McGeogh‘s angular guitar work. Over time, I’ve come to enjoy it, but I was shocked and to some extent horrified the first time I played it, given it was such a departure from the version I knew so well.
The singular 7″ of Sweetheart Contact came with this version of Feed The Enemy as the b-side. You had to pick up the double-pack for the other two tracks.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Just 4 week on the charts for such an epic album??! Disbelief from this American that would place this in a 1980 top 10 list easily, though we were spoiled for selections in the ‘79-‘81 corridor of amazements.
Thanks for this!! What a song. What a band!
Four of those nine singles (of which this was one) were released in similar ‘Correct Use of Soap’ packaging in a flurry between February and July 1980. Upside Down is the non-album one, and well worth having for the b-side, the sharpened-up version of The Light Pours Out Of Me. It’s the only one I bought, since it wasn’t on the album which came out at almost the same time in May 1980. A curious release strategy all round. Discogs says that on first release the album smelt of soap! I bought that first release and it certainly had a nice odour (something I used to notice in them days – The Rezillos album was particularly memorable) but it never occurred to me that it was meant to be soap…