‘Eardrum Buzz’ was one of Wire’s two single releases of 1989 (along with ‘In Vivo’) that seemingly had their mind focussed on the ‘think pop’ message that Mute label owner, Daniel Miller, had apparently made the message of the previous year’s Berlin recording sessions (for what would be ‘A Bell Is A Cup (Until It Is Struck)’). ‘Eardrum Buzz’ certainly was a catchy ear-worm of a tune, to be sure, and such were the hopes of this making in-roads to the charts of the day that its release (in the UK at least) saw Mute records issue a regular 7″ single, a limited edition clear vinyl 7″ single (withdrawn hastily, apparently), regular 12″ single, 3″ CD single (with a different selection of additional tracks) and limited edition second 12″ single with exclusive live tracks – oh, and one of Wire’s most witty and entertaining promo videos, with a left-field star-studded cast in ear-waggling cameos. Despite the multi-format effort, it didn’t break the upper reaches of the charts – a shame as it was without any doubt one of Wire’s ‘pop’ numbers (well, the kind of ‘perfect pop’ that the NME’s writers used to bang on about) they had periodically been feted for since early days and the video gained plenty of airtime on the likes of MTV (and even an elusive interview with the band on BBC 2’s ‘Snub TV’).
