released Love Will Tear Us Apart

The suicide shocked the band and their management. In 2005, Wilson said: “I think all of us made the mistake of not thinking his suicide was going to happen … We all completely underestimated the danger. We didn’t take it seriously. That’s how stupid we were.” Music critic Simon Reynolds said Curtis’s suicide “made for instant myth”. Jon Savage’s obituary said that “now no one will remember what his work with Joy Division was like when he was alive; it will be perceived as tragic rather than courageous”. In June 1980, Joy Division’s single ” Love Will Tear Us Apart ” was released, which hit number thirteen on the UK Singles Chart . In July 1980, Closer was released, and peaked at number six on the UK Albums Chart . NME reviewer Charles Shaar Murray wrote, ” Closer is as magnificent a memorial (for ‘Joy Division’ as much as for Ian Curtis) as any post- Presley popular musician could have.”