Songfacts®:

• This was the first song the group produced themselves, splitting with Martin Hannett, who the band credit for teaching them the mechanics of recording. "Producing ourselves we get more satisfaction," frontman Bernard Sumner told The Face in 1983. "We know what we want and we can do it. With Martin the songs often turned out different, sometimes better, sometimes not."
• New Order was pushing the boundaries of electronic dance music with this song, which got a lot of play in European discos and made its way to America's more progressive cities, notably New York.
  
  The song was released as a single in both 7" and 12" format.
• The band would sometimes end their shows with this song, at times without being onstage. During the last few minutes of the song, an unmanned sequencer and drum machine could play out the song while the band departed, leaving the crowd staring at the instruments. Eschewing an encore, the band would disappear, leaving the audience to wonder what happened.
• The song is a tale of heartbreak, and like many New Order songs, the title doesn't show up in the lyric.
• In our interview with the band's bass player Peter Hook, he said: "'Temptation' is a song that showcases every element of New Order as a band, and that's another one that always goes down a storm when played live."
• Bernard Sumner told Mojo in a 2015 interview that this is probably his favorite New Order song. He said: "It's got a spirituality to it. It's really uplifting without actually getting a specific message across. It was interesting to see that you could do that while, at the time, being fairly abstract. I struggled with the literalness of my lyrics in the early days. I didn't want to expose my inner feelings to the general public "