The phrase: "Is mother proud of Little Boy today?"
The lyrics to the song reflect on the decision to use the bomb and ask the listener to consider whether the bombings were necessary ("It shouldn't ever have to end this way"). The name "Enola" is the word "alone" spelled backward. The name of the bomber itself was chosen by its commanding pilot, (then) Col Paul Tibbets who named it after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets (1893–1983), who herself had been named for the heroine of the novel Enola or, Her fatal mistake. The song is named after the Enola Gay, the USAAF B-29 Superfortress bomber that carried " Little Boy", the first atomic bomb to be used in an act of war, dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, killing more than 100,000 of its citizens. The song is based on the 50s progression, which repeats throughout the entire song. In a 2012 interview, the band mentioned that most of the melodic parts were recorded on a Korg Micro-Preset, and that the drum machine sound was "about the last thing to go on" the recording. The song's title is frequently misprinted on the internet as "Enola Gay e". Critic Ned Raggett in Allmusic retrospectively described the track as "astounding.a flat-out pop classic – clever, heartfelt, thrilling, and confident, not to mention catchy and arranged brilliantly." It featured in MusicRadar's "The 40 Greatest Synth Tracks Ever" in 2009, who noted that the song "includes some of the biggest synth hooks of all time." In 2012, NME listed the track among the "100 Best Songs of the 1980s" and wrote that it "married Andy McClusky's brilliantly quizzical vocal and placed OMD's unstoppable mesh of synths and programmed beats front and centre to create a pop classic." The song was selected by the BBC for use during the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Recognisable by its distinctive lead synthesizer hook and ambiguous lyrics, "Enola Gay" has come to be regarded as one of the greatest pop songs of the 1980s.
It topped the charts in France, Italy and Portugal. The song was a sleeper hit in the UK: it entered the UK Singles Chart at number 35, but proved popular with audiences and climbed 27 places over the next 3 weeks to reach a peak of number 8, thus becoming the group's first Top 10 hit in their home country. McCluskey has stated that the song is "not a celebration" of the event, but hopes that it conveys "an ambivalence about whether it was the right or the wrong thing to do." Released as a single, "Enola Gay" was an enormous success, going on to sell more than 5 million copies internationally. Written by frontman Andy McCluskey, it addresses the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during the final stages of World War II and references Enola Gay and " Little Boy", the Boeing B-29 Superfortress and nuclear weapon used in the bombing, respectively. " Enola Gay" is an anti-war song by British synthpop band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), released as the only single from their 1980 album, Organisation.