When you hear the swirling synths and clattering beat that open “If You Leave” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD, for short), you just might be transported to some long-ago theater, or maybe back to nights at home with the VCR running. Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll recall the nervous excitement of a high school dance. This ‘80s anthem has a way of evoking nostalgia for that era like few other songs.
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In fact, the song is such a perfect example of desperate romanticism that you might imagine it to be one that was toiled over for weeks in an effort to make it the perfect fit for what would turn out to be an iconic movie scene. But what if we told you it actually was written and recorded in the span of an evening or so, because of a famous, yet fickle, filmmaker? Let’s look back now at how “If You Leave” came to be, starting with the group that surged from cult status to pop stardom upon the song’s release.
Oh My, OMD
Formed in England toward the end of the ‘70s, OMD were early adopters of the synth-pop sound. But while other artists in the genre focused on love songs and other typical pop music fodder, the songwriting duo of Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys tackled more complex topics, while still loading their songs with hooks. This approach worked wonders in Europe, but made them more of a cult act in the United States.
Luckily, one of their U.S. fans was John Hughes, the noted writer and director who often filled his teen-centric films with songs from U.K. bands. He contacted OMD to submit a track for his 1986 film Pretty in Pink, which featured Hughes’ muse Molly Ringwald in an odd love triangle with a preppy hunk played by Andrew McCarthy and an offbeat free spirit played by Jon Cryer.
The band happily obliged, feeling this could be their chance to break big in the United States. They knew the plot of the film and settled in to write a track based on that. OMD delivered the song “Goddess of Love” to Hughes, feeling confident they were on the same page. Unfortunately, test audiences were on a different page completely, which led to the rushed creation of one of the top ballads of the ‘80s.
Writing on the Fly
Andy McCluskey spoke to the author of this article for the book Playing Back the ‘80s: A Decade of Unstoppable Hits, and recounted what led to “If You Leave”: “They test-screened it and all the teen girls went, ‘No, no, no. He’s her best friend. She needs to end up with the good-looking guy for the happy ending.’ We’d gone home and written ‘Goddess of Love,’ and when we got back to L.A., armed with the two-inch tape ready to mix it, [Hughes] said, ‘Guys, I’m really sorry, but we’ve re-shot the end of the movie and it’s got a completely different storyline now. We like your song, but is there any way you can write us another that’s got different lyrics that would be more appropriate now to the new ending?’”
You heard that right: In the initial version of Pretty in Pink, Ringwald’s character ended up with Cryer’s Duckie, but audiences weren’t having it. Because Hughes was on a time crunch to finish the picture, the band had no choice but to hustle to a rented studio and work out a new song. Hence, they couldn’t go too complex with the lyrics, instead focusing on just churning out what McCluskey humbly calls a “craftsman” song.
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In around 14 hours, McCluskey and Humphreys wrote “If You Leave” and created a rough mix. Once Hughes heard it the next morning, he was blown away, which meant that OMD had to get back to the studio on just a few hours sleep to polish up the track for an official recording.
The Magic of “If You Leave”
“If You Leave” comes from the perspective of a narrator who knows that the end of a relationship is near and is asking for just a little more time before the final cut. Oddly enough, for a song that actually soundtracks a happy ending, it’s about a breakup. But what comes through as you watch that closing scene and hear the song is the heart-on-sleeve urgency of teen romance, epitomized by the wailing that McCluskey does in the final moments.
Even though it was rushed and put together without any kind of forethought, “If You Leave” delivered just what OMD wanted. The song went to the Top 5 in the U.S., and it hasn’t ever quite departed from the public consciousness since. Part of that longevity has to do with it occupying such a special place in a beloved movie by a one-of-a-kind ‘80s filmmaker. But the song itself has undeniable staying power, so much so that you’d never guess it was created under such forbidding time constraints and intense pressure.
How fitting that one of the key phrases in the song is “Don’t look back.” Necessity forced OMD to forget what they had done in the past and forge ahead, and they ended up with a stone-cold classic as a result.
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