She Blinded Me With Science

I noticed there are two versions of this song. One with a cold ending and the
other with a drum coda. Which version was the 45 version, or was it neither?

I only heard the shorter version in my radio world back in 1983. In fact, I was kinda disappointed when I bought the 45...didn't really care for that extended drum ending.

The UK 7" has the shorter 3:40 version.

For quite a while, the only version a US customer could buy was the 5:09 version. I bought the 45 when it came out, thinking it was the version I heard on the radio. Nope. So I bought The Golden Age Of Wireless on LP. Not there either. It wasn't available in the US until a mail-order compilation called Formula 45 came out (Sliver Eagle Records, 1988), which was later repackaged with artwork featuring OJ Simpson and retitled 1st and 10.

I had the good fortune to interview Thomas Dolby last year, and asked him about his early pop work. He said that his first album, The Golden Age Of Wireless, originally didn't have "She Blinded Me With Science" or "One Of Our Submarines" on it. That version of the album featured the single "Europa And The Pirate Twins," and had run its course in the UK and US. Thomas submitted two new songs to EMI ("Science" and "Submarines"), and EMI released them as a 7" single in the UK. Thomas's US label, Harvest, was experimenting with the EP format at the time (like Duran Duran's Carnival, which featured the new track, "Hungry Like The Wolf"). EMI commissioned extended versions of those tracks and three others from the original Golden Age, and put out the EP Blinded By Science, and the accompanying 7" of "Science". Both featured the 5:09 edit. When "Science" took off, they tacked it onto The Golden Age Of Wireless and rereleased it in the US, where it did quite nicely. There are 3 different pressings of Golden Age on LP, all with different track listings. The one that made it to CD was the last release, featuring the 5:09 edit of "Science". Thomas said he had little control over what was released where, and remarked that the music was marketed "like toothpaste". I got the impression that not a lot of thought was applied to which version made it onto the US 7".

In the late '80s, I ran across a German pressing of the Golden Age CD that featured the 3:40 edit of "Science" (plus a guitar-driven version of "Radio Silence" which has since never made it onto CD). I held it in my hands and played it in the store, so I know it exists, but I didn't buy it. Oops! Never seen it since. Obviously, the 3:40 has come out on dozens of other CDs since then.


Edited by crapfromthepast

Absolutely! Just paste the last note of the short version onto the longer one at 4:20. Of course, the song would no longer be 5:00; it would run about 4:21 or 4:22.

Regarding Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me with Science", the database currently states that commercial copies are all 5:09. Abagon reports that the actual 45 run time is 5:07, not 5:09 as stated on the record label. I know we're only talking about a marginal two second difference, but the 5:07 time is a little more in line with the song's 45 version appearances in the database.


Edited by Todd Ireland