“Ball of Confusion,” the No. 3 hit Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong wrote for the Temptations for their 1970 album “Greatest Hits II,” started out as a pointed R&B lament about the state of the world at the end of the tumultuous ’60s. It feels as relevant as ever with the rapidly rotting remnants of the American century collapsing around us.
The song got its first revival in the ’80s, when New Wave bands set it to an electrobeat. The first was a British band called Zeitgeist (not to be confused with the several American and German bands of the same name), but their version didn’t go anywhere.
Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh of the Human League, who recorded as B.E.F. (the British Electric Foundation) before adopting the name Heaven 17, drafted Tina Turner to provide a dose of soul to the mechanistic proceedings. When the track, from an album of covers featuring various guest vocalists, was released as a single, its success in Norway led to Turner’s contract with Capitol Records and her smash 1984 album “Private Dancer.”
The most accessible version was by Love and Rockets, the British New Wavers formed from the remnants of Bauhaus. They had their first chart success in 1985 with “Ball of Confusion,” but they’re remembered mostly for their 1989 monster hit “So Alive.”
