Temptation

"Temptation" is a single by British band Heaven 17, originally released in April 1983, peaking at number two on the UK Singles Chart. This was the second single to be taken from their second album, The Luxury Gap, after "Let Me Go" in November 1982. "Temptation" was certified silver by the BPI in May 1983, for sales exceeding 250,000 copies. Composition and recording Martyn Ware explained the subject matter of the song as "I woke up one morning and thought I've got to write a song about sex, I've never written a song about sex. So the song is about rising sexual tension; it has chords that keep going up like an [M. C.] Escher staircase and in the end there's this big release." Glenn Gregory later recalled that he laughed "when Martyn walked in and said he had this great idea for a song based on the Lord’s Prayer with a never-ending chord structure" (the line "lead us not into temptation" is taken from the Lord's Prayer). Carol Kenyon provided guest vocals on the recording and continued to work with the band on the Pleasure One and Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho albums. The song featured a 60-piece orchestra, arranged and conducted by John Wesley Barker, which was also featured on the single "Come Live with Me" and a third track on the parent album. In a 2016 interview Ware said that he told Barker that he wanted the arrangement to be "sweeping and expressionistic", giving the theme from The Big Country as an example of the kind of sound required. Performance Heaven 17 performed this song on Top of the Pops 1000th edition in 1983.