She's Lost Control

Of the handful of singles that the legendary Joy Division released in their brief lifespan, the utterly bone-chilling ‘She’s Lost Control’ remains the post-punk troupe’s most compelling and influential. Drawing perverse inspiration from late frontman Ian Curtis’s encounter with an epileptic and her accompanying lack of direction, this iconic composition acquired an additional resonance from the fact that Curtis himself suffered from the same condition. Musically speaking, the track is a commendable exercise in classicist death-disco aesthetics, with the band firing on all cylinders: Stephen Morris laying down a terrifyingly steady backbeat, Peter Hook providing a spookily insistent high-register bass line, Bernard Sumner wielding abrasive, jagged riffs, and Curtis himself delivering a haunted, nerve-wracking vocal performance. Check out this vintage-quality, persuasive live clip of the song, with Curtis treating the audience to his infamous ‘fly dance’, which fit the work’s desperation-filled, despair-ridden lyrics to a tee.