We Are Glass

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"We Are Glass"

Single by Gary Numan
Released	May 1980
Format	7" single
Recorded	Rock City Studios, London 1980
Genre	New Wave, Synth rock
Length	4:46
Label	Beggars Banquet BEG 35
Producer(s)	Gary Numan
Chart positions
#5 (UK)
Gary Numan singles chronology
"Complex" (1979)	" We Are Glass" (1980)	"I Die: You Die" (1980)

"We Are Glass" is a Gary Numan single released in 1980. Its up-tempo beat, scratchy guitars and pitch-bending synthesizer effects made it a prime example of the synth rock of the time.

The song was Numan’s first release since his 1979 album The Pleasure Principle, which had been notable in part for its complete absence of guitars. Though the album was a major commercial success, Numan decided that "getting rid of guitars had been a mistake" ^[1] and brought them back into the studio for his next project. The recording also featured viola, piano, and a newly-expanded array of electronic keyboards, including ARP Pro Soloist and Roland Jupiter-4, to augment the Moog synthesizers of previous releases. In addition, Numan replaced the crashing synthetic percussion common to "Cars" and other songs on The Pleasure Principle with handclaps.

According to the composer, speaking on Australian radio 2SM in 1981, the song was inspired by a comment from a magazine staffer: "Somebody once told me, a man from Omni, said that he thought I'd been put here by... something... aliens or something, to carry out a cause... which I thought was very flattering but a little silly... 'We Are Glass' I wrote because of that, y'know, like all pop stars are put here for reasons".

The accompanying music video featured images of clapping hands silhouetted against laser light, as well as numerous slow-motion shots of the singer smashing bodily through glass panels and destroying mirrors and TV sets with sledge hammers. The alleged strong violence of these latter images resulted in the promo being banned from Britain's Top of the Pops.

Originally released on single only, "We Are Glass" reached number 5 in the UK charts in 1980. The B-side was one of Numan's few non-original pieces, the first movement of Erik Satie's "Trois Gymnopedies", in an arrangement that added guitar, bass and synthesizer to the original's solo piano part.

"We Are Glass" has appeared on numerous compilation albums, as well as CD reissues of the 1980 album Telekon. The song is a regular feature of Numan's concerts and is included on many of his live albums. EMF covered the song on the Random tribute album in 1997. It was remixed twice for the 1998 collection The Mix.