Songfacts®:

• This song is telling us we can achieve our dreams, no matter what others may think. Howard Jones told us that "New Song" is his manifesto, and why he wanted to get in the music business and write songs to begin with. Said Jones: "I was working in the factory at the time - I was doing the gigs at night and I was working in the factory. And I wanted to say to people, 'You can. It is possible to do what you really want to do if you've got enough guts and determination. You can do what you're really good at in this life if you set your mind to it.' And so really that's what that song's about. It's about letting go of fear and seeing both sides of an argument and throwing off the things that hold you back mentally. So I always say it was my manifesto, and I've kind of stuck to that. It's a very positive song. And I went on to write a lot of very positive songs during my career."
• "New Song" was one of the tracks Howard Jones performed when he first hit the live circuit. Jones told us: "'New Song,' at the time I was playing in tiny bars and sometimes I would go up to London to play small clubs. I was playing about three nights a week. I was constantly writing, I was constantly trying out new material with my audience."
• Howard Jones told us that only certain people tend to get the irony of the track: "If you look at the lyrics of that song, they're pure philosophy. They're not like pop lyrics at all. But that was the irony of it. It's a very pop song. But the lyrics are pure philosophy. What happened is the people who really got me, got what I was trying to do, they understood. And then people who only see things on the surface didn't get me. And I've always had that - either you like Howard Jones or you don't, there's no in between. Which I like. I'm happy with that."
• The video is a very literal interpretation of what Jones is trying to say in the song. It shows him escaping the factory life and becoming liberated through music, along the way imparting his message to school children by standing on a desk and warning them: "Don't be fooled by what you hear."