Blue Monday (New Order song)

Lore & Background

New Order wrote "Blue Monday" in their rehearsal room in Cheetham Hill, Manchester. The synth bassline was performed on a Moog Source and sequenced on a sequencer built by singer Bernard Sumner. An Oberheim DMX drum machine provided rhythm, and the kick drum was recorded playing through a studio monitor to capture natural reverb. The band used an Emulator 1 sampler to create the choir-like sound by sampling their own voices or using a library sample—not from Kraftwerk—and learned to use it by recording their flatulence and sneezes. Before MIDI, engineer Martin Usher designed a circuit to synchronise the synthesisers and drum machine; the sequence was programmed using binary code. Gilbert wrote the sequence by hand and accidentally added an extra rest, throwing it slightly out of time—the band kept the effect.

The single's packaging, designed by Peter Saville and Brett Wickens, featured a die-cut sleeve resembling a 5+1⁄4-inch floppy disk with no words, only coloured blocks encoding the artist, song, and label information. The sleeve cost so much to produce that Factory Records lost money on each copy sold. The 1983 edition artwork was so late that Saville sent it straight to the printer unreviewed by the band or label. Later reissues had subtle changes to limit cost, such as replacing die-cut areas with printed silver ink.

"Blue Monday" does not feature a standard verse-chorus structure; after a lengthy introduction, the first and second verses are contiguous, separated from the third verse only by sound effects. A short breakdown leads to an extended outro. The song was described by BBC Radio 2 as "a crucial link between Seventies disco and the dance/house boom that took off at the end of the Eighties."

Reader's Guide

"Blue Monday" is the best-selling 12-inch single in history. In the United Kingdom, it has sold 1.16 million copies in all formats, including the 1988 and 1995 re-releases; the original 1983 12-inch release accounts for over 700,000 copies. The original single reached number nine on the UK singles chart and spent 38 weeks in the top 75, and 186 weeks on the UK Independent Singles Chart—second only to "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division (195 weeks). In New Zealand, it peaked at number 2 and spent 74 weeks in the top 50. The 1988 remix reached number 3 on the British chart, number 4 on the Australian chart, and topped the US dance chart. The song has been covered by bands including Orgy, Flunk, 808 State, the Enemy, and Health. In 2021 and 2022, Rolling Stone included it at numbers 235 and 18 in its lists of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" and "200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time". The song's influence is widely acknowledged, with critics calling it a synth-pop classic that cemented New Order's transition from post-punk to alternative dance.

Did You Know?

• The single's sleeve cost so much to produce that Factory Records lost money on each copy sold.
• The song's sequence was programmed using binary code, and an accidental extra rest thrown in by Gillian Gilbert was kept in the final track.
• The music video for the original 1983 version features the band performing with abstract visuals, not footage from Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Zaxxon.
• The band learned to use their Emulator 1 sampler by recording their flatulence and sneezes.