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Intro

For most listeners, Ultravox means Midge Ure, with his widescreen vocals, hearttugging synths and apocalyptic romance. For example, the gravitas of Vienna. But Ultravox originally had a different blueprint for its first three albums thanks to Eno-acolyte John Foxx. Ultravox’s early sound was also synth-heavy but otherwise contrasted with the Ure years. Some bands weather a vocalist swap with minimal disruption - Survivor’s belters shared similar registers, and even Van Halen’s shift altered personality more than architecture. Ultravox was different. The Foxx-to-Ure transition didn’t just change timbre; it rewired the band’s emotional and structural blueprint. Let’s see how…

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The World They Describe

Early Ultravox was adept at vividly painting dystopian landscapes. For instance, in I Want to Be a Machine, Foxx weaves together monster (“bones of all your ghosts”), outer space (“dead stars”), and technological (“cathode”) metaphors in grotesque fashion to explain why he wants to shed his humanity. It’s very dense, with technical-writer level detail.

And while Wide Boys, with its walking-down-the-street theme and fictional street references (“Einstein Boulevard”), manages detailed, macabre references to Nagasaki, “the perfume of utter dismay”, and “suicide pride”.

When Ure comes on board, he shifts the worldbuilding metaphors to invisible forces (like God and atomic energy). For instance, in the appropriately-titled Hymn, he repurposes the prayer staple “give us this day” to help craft a world of inspiration. And when Ure opts for a downer, he supersizes it from dystopian to apocalyptic (the Cold War staple🔖 Dancing With Tears in My Eyes). Description of the evirons are more abstract than Foxx but work deftly in their own way. It’s like Foxx documented the system, and Ure confronts the soul within it.

And take Midge Ure’s biggie, Vienna - its landscape description is a lot more sparse, but even the spaces in the song allow the portrayed desolation to hit you hard. The lyrics are economical: “piercing cry”, “haunted notes”, and “means nothing to me” illustrate the pain, unease and nihilism. You feel Vienna’s emotions, then flesh out the visuals in your head.

Foxx maps the system; Ure inhabits its consequences.

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Emotional Temperature

While Foxx’s and Ure’s Ultravoxes both wrestled with modern anxiety, they dealt with it differently. Foxx was not anxious or upset about the dystopias he fleshed out. While he felt a duty to chronicle and communicate this malaise, Foxx left it up to the listener to emotionally interpret and perhaps act on it. It also intentionally ups the songs’ unease: Foxx’s imagery is often disturbing and yet he’s unmoved. For instance, The Man Who Dies Everyday paints a brutal Groundhog’s Day vignette. And Foxx keeps chronicling, not skipping a beat in the face of this horror. Foxx rarely crescendos, opting for flat affect to invoke apathy and preserve his role as the calculated notetaker.

Ure takes a different path, paring down lyrical complexity considerably. This is to allow Ure to play to his key strength: emotional expansion. With a simpler message, Ure raises the vocal ante, to persuade the listener rather than giving detailed information. Two of Ure’s biggest tools to achieve this are sustaining certain vowels, and crescendos within a sentence. Case in point: Dancing With Tears In My Eyes is about a husband who has one last dance with his wife before succumbing to nuclear annihilation. The dramatic synth progressions, typical of Ure-era Ultravox, also sells this existential crisis well.

Foxx reports the crisis, while Ure sells you feeling its gravity.

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Space and Scale

Another key difference between the Ultravoxes is the sense of space and scale. Foxx earned his place amongst the synthpop icons, crafting spiky, smothering melodies during new wave’s embryonic era of 1977-78. This is thanks to the synergy of looping, haunting synths and guitars that trap you in amber. Hiroshima Mon Amour shows this greatly - save two saxophone solos, it’s a straight-up dirge. Foxx’s droning vocals purposely suppress your momentum and flatten your propulsion.

The track Slow Motion features a tight rhythmic loop, quickly boxing in the listener. Harmonic expansion is eschewed to reinforce this trance. In fact, in listening to Slow Motion I felt like I was pacing inside a narrow concrete hallway. Thanks to its cleverly-insistent pulse that never truly opens, the listener keeps moving but doesn’t go anywhere.

Ure-era Ultravox is more varied with the instrumentation, making them prominent and layered. The result are open landscapes that serve as excellent backdrop for the lyrics. For example, in All Fall Down, he employs military-style drums with flutes, which propel this Celtic-sounding track. Along with the song title, I easily envisioned a medieval Irish battle.

And going back to Vienna, its silence and reverb serve to scale its environment to large proportions, with the gradual buildup ensuring this growth is sustained throughout. Orchestral synth layering give Vienna a grand feel, which lives up to its full potential thanks to cathedral-like acoustics. Vienna doesn’t just occupy space - it reverberates within it.

Foxx builds narrow corridors, while Ure builds arenas.

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Musical Architecture

Early Ultravox, in line with the early brand of new wave embodied by songs like Talking Heads'🔖 Psycho Killer, favored repetitive, tight, and angular guitar riffs. Indeed, Foxx-era Ultravox favored skeletal frameworks. This is done to create minimalist tension, and what makes Foxx Ultravox unique is that they also apply these riffs to synths. Also important is what Foxx avoids: crescendo. Young Savage illustrates this, with guitar, synth, and Foxx’s vocals that are fast and ferocious. The Foxx-era track Rockwrok is also breakneck-paced and emphasizes repetition. Foxx sounds like a runaway machine, with the sound “rock” repeating in the entire chorus (and even within the word “Rockwrok”).

Later Ultravox warms the synths considerably. But rather than using them to invite you to dance or relax (as Yaz or Howard Jones🔖 often do), Ultravox uses that warmth to light a fire under you. Ure is also much more dynamic vocally: his verses are swallowed a bit more than Foxx, but that’s to set up explosive choruses. Take Love’s Great Adventure, its iconic, whirlwind synth riff quickly rallies you. Later, the end of the choruses have a rapid-fire shout to further accelerate you. This is all supported by a brisk rhythm that rarely wavers.

The Voice, clocking in at 6-minutes, is not padded: it starts with a military snare hits to introduce restrained tension and build anticipation. And then the synths get stacked on to escalate things. Ure smartly holds back until the chorus, where he wails and pleads. It’s like he blew up the dam built in the intro and verses.

Foxx withholds the crescendo; Ure builds toward it.

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Outro

Ultravox didn’t simply exchange frontmen; it recalibrated its blueprint. Under Foxx, the band traced cold corridors of modernity with architectural restraint and emotional detachment. Under Ure, those corridors widened into cathedrals of urgency and existential sweep. The instruments remained familiar - think synths, tension, atmosphere - but the intent shifted. One era observed the system; the other tried to move you through it. Same band, different temperature. Is there one you prefer?

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