NOTES

'Stand Above Me' was the first single taken from the album.

'Everyday' was the third single release and is actually an old McCluskey/Humphreys song dating from 1987. The song was originally considered as the first single.

At the time, Andy described 'King Of Stone' as about "choosing to be alone, but being lonely; being the King Of Stone".

'Dollar Girl' was inspired by an article on Russian prostitutes who took payment in American dollars.

'Dream Of Me' was the second single release. The single had caused problems due to the fact that it was based on 'Love Theme Part 2' by Barry White, who initially objected to the use of a sample being used for the song.

'Sunday Morning' is a cover of the Velvet Underground song that first featured on their 1967 album The Velvet Underground & Nico.

'Agnus Dei' was the first song written by Andy for Liberator. The song was inspired by both an interest in techno and rave music (which was popular in the early 1990s) and also by an album of cathedral music by Christopher Tye. Andy was so taken by Tye's music that he rewrote the song to follow the chords.

'Love You And Hate You' was an old song which dated from the Sugar Tax era, although the original version was a slow reggae song. "Lyrically, its about loving and hating somebody" commented Andy at the time, "you love somebody but they drive you mad" Andy

'Heaven Is' dates back to 1983 from the early Junk Culture sessions. An early version was also performed live during a low-key tour in September of the same year. The lyrics are slightly shorter from the original version as Andy felt they were too long. He also changed the reference to 'Selina Scott' - a well-known UK TV personality to 'Christy Canyon - a well-known US porn film star!

'Best Years Of Our Lives' was a stripped down song that featured strings and choirs. Andy described the song as "one of the best lyrics that I've written".

'Christine' was originally written for Sugar Tax. The lyrics are a fictitious narrative described by Andy as "a song about a girl who works in a strip club in Manhattan, because she's got no other way of supporting herself"

'Only Tears' was described by Andy : "I guess it's just about sadness at the end of a relationship really and how you should be dealing with it and how you should look upon life when faced with these things".

TRIVIA

Liberator had originally been inspired by Andy's interest in World War II aircraft, particularly the B24 Liberator. The original sleeve idea took this theme further and was going to feature a variation on the 'bomber girl' nose cone art that many warplanes used.

One of the original themes of Liberator was to aim for songs that were weirder than the straight electropop of the previous album Sugar Tax. "We did try to write a track that was made up of slamming doors and tennis ball bounces, using a steam train as a rhythm track" commented Andy McCluskey in Future Music magazine at the time, "but unfortunately it didn't work out".

Among the songs dropped from Liberator were 'Style And Grace', 'Cruel', 'You're Always Coming Back To Me', 'Sanctus', 'Next To You', 'Twins' and 'Kiss Of Death'.

In its demo form, 'Kiss Of Death' appeared to be an attempt to combine some of the classic gothic elements of earlier OMD material (particularly the Organisation-era sound) with the dance-pop approach that defined 1990s OMD.

As with Sugar Tax, the Liberator album also had a song based on the album title, but 'Liberator' was dropped from the final track listing (again, similar to the decision to drop 'Sugar Tax' from the previous album).

The original sleeve design, featuring a scantily clad model, was dropped because there was a feeling that many of the high street outlets might object to the artwork.