Susan's Strange

In February of 1980, Columbia Records released the first Psychedelic Furs album. As I remember it Tower Records was selling the album for half-off what they would normally sell their new releases, I think around $4.99, when new releases were going for $8.99/$9.99 at the time. Initially I was offended that my music was only worth half of the big market acts, but hey, I was getting a deal, and I thought the music was great, so that's all that mattered. This is the US album cover I remember (pretty plain and cheap-looking):

I guess big label Columbia was trying to promote their "new wave"acts, so people would be enticed to buy this strange music. The Furs were one of the first bands, if not the first, to be played on mainstream AOR FM radio. The Clash was the first band I remember hearing on AM with "Train in Vain", about the same time in 1980.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Album-oriented_rock

Now, progressive, underground, and college-radio FM stations had been playing Punk/New Wave for years, but mainstream FM AOR, in the US (most of the airwaves, along with AM), wouldn't touch the stuff, so this was ground-breaking. In fact 1980 was a banner year with other "new wave" acts like U2 and Teardrop Explodes making it to mainstream FM radio.

There are two songs that differ from the US and UK releases. Actually, one (Blacks/Radio) was deleted, and two (Soap Commercial, Susan's Strange) were added. Martin Hannett of Factory/Joy Division fame (although at the time Joy Division was virtually unknown in the US), produced the two songs for the US version. Hannett was obsessed with drum sounds (isn't every producer/engineer?) and a little of that obsession can be heard in these tracks:

I really like the music in "Soap Commercial", but the lyrics are a little lacking for me, however, I really liked "Susan's Strange", maybe because I knew a couple of strange Susans at the time.