Trivia / Ultravox

• Canon Discontinuity: The band's 90's material is treated as this, having been ignored by Ultravox and their associates since the Midge Ure lineup's 2008 reunion. While rights issues may play a part in this (given that both Revelation and Ingenuity were released on completely different labels), the fact that the 90's albums were critical and commercial failures and featured radically different lineups with the sole exception of Billy Currie are also major factors in them being put by the wayside; Ure, Warren Cann, and Chris Cross even went so far as to call the era Ultravox In Name Only.
• Channel Hop: The band were signed onto Island Records throughout the John Foxx era, but switched to Chrysalis Records during Midge Ure's tenure as frontman. The first 90's incarnation of the Billy Currie-led lineup were signed onto DSB records, and the second on Resurgance Records, with Intercord Records distributing their material in Germany. Puzzle Records would later snag the UK rights to the 90's material, while the band would return to Chrysalis for the Ure lineup's reunion and their final album, Brill!ant.
• Colbert Bump: Midge Ure's solo cover of David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World" gained great exposure through its prominent use in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and Ultravox's "Dancing With Tears in My Eyes" gained renewed interest from being a collectible cassette tape in-game.
• Creator Killer: The combination of poor fan and critical reception, relative commercial underperformance, and Creator Backlash surrounding U-Vox directly led to the band's first breakup. They wouldn't reach their old heights again afterwards, with the Billie Currie-led 90's lineups being met with indifference at best and Brill!ant splitting too many hairs to be viewed as a proper comeback album. Ultravox would eventually announce their permanent breakup five years later, and would be mostly forgotten about in the mainstream eye apart from their Signature Song "Vienna".
• Creative Differences: What led Foxx to leave the band. Foxx was interested in pursuing a more electronic sound (indicated on his last album with Ultravox, Systems of Romance), but his bandmates wished to stick to the Post-Punk sound they were known for at the time; Foxx would later carry on with his desire in his solo work, which is decidedly Synth-Pop. Ironically, Ultravox would end up shifting to a more synthesizer-driven sound anyway with the arrival of synthpop veteran Midge Ure and the release of Vienna in 1980, a sound that would come to define their career more strongly than their prior work with Foxx.
• Disowned Adaptation: Midge Ure, Chris Cross, and Warren Cann were openly scathing towards the two 90's iterations of Ultravox, describing Revelation as "just clean, catchy early 90's pop with a faceless new singer" and the era as a whole as Ultravox In Name Only. This sentiment serves as a major factor in the 90's albums remaining out of print since the Ure lineup's reformation in 2008.
• No Export for You: Revelation and Ingenuity were never released outside of Europe, presumably due to their critical and commercial failures.
• The Pete Best: Foxx, in a rare case of this happening with a band that had already been signed and released several albums (to modest success and critical acclaim, to be fair). After he left, the band had its first-ever hit singles with Midge Ure at the mic, and remained fixtures of the UK pop charts for several years. Foxx's solo career brought him some minor hits, and he withdrew from music for a time after 1985.
• Referenced by...:
  • The 1981 Yellow Magic Orchestra song "Cue" was written as a direct homage to Ultravox, specifically riffing on the "Vienna" B-Side "Passionate Reply".
  • In the Doctor Who story "Cold War", Professor Grisenko listens to bootleg tapes of British New Wave Music acts, including Ultravox. Early in the story, he can be heard listening to "Vienna", and when he learns that the Doctor and Clara are time travelers, his top priority is knowing whether or not Ultravox split up in the future.
• What Could Have Been: John Foxx was approached early in the band's life as a potential vocalist for The Clash, while a pre-Ultravox Midge Ure was one of the people Malcolm Mclaren considered as a vocalist for the Sex Pistols.