Elegia (New Order song)

"Elegia" is a piece composed by Peter Hook, Gillian Gilbert, Stephen Morris, and Bernard Sumner for the British rock band New Order. Unusually for New Order, it is a dark wave instrumental in A minor with a time signature of 12/8. It can be found on their third studio album, Low-Life (1985). The band have stated that the song was written in memory of Ian Curtis, lead singer of the band's former incarnation, Joy Division. Elegia is Greek for elegy.

17-minute version

In 1993, drummer Stephen Morris stated in an interview with Select magazine that the album version of "Elegia" was a five-minute edit of a 17-and-a-half-minute recording. As the internet became widely available, a poor-quality mp3, allegedly of this recording, surfaced in the mid-90s. However, it was not until the release of the compilation boxset Retro in 2002 that the full recording officially saw the light of day. The song was used as the conclusion to the bonus fifth disc included with early releases of the set. The mp3 that had found its way onto the internet did appear to be the same as the song later released. This version was also released on the 2008 Collector's Edition of Low-Life.

Use in media

The album version of the song was featured in the Academy Award-nominated short film More by Mark Osborne, the film Pretty in Pink, the trailer for the 1992 film Night of the Living Dead, and the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode "Compulsion". It was also used in an American Masters documentary about writer Truman Capote, in the fifth episode of the first season of the Netflix series Stranger Things, as well as in "Rust" – a black-and-white music video by Nenko Genov, for the E3 2015 trailer of the video game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and by comedian Sam Hyde for the trailer to his web series "Kickstarter TV".