| "Blue Monday" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by New Order | ||||
| B-side | "The Beach" | |||
| Released | 7 March 1983 | |||
| Format | 12" | |||
| Recorded | 1982 | |||
| Genre | Alternative dance, New Wave | |||
| Length | 7:23 | |||
| Label | Factory - FAC 73 | |||
| Writer(s) | Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert | |||
| Producer | New Order | |||
| New Order singles chronology | ||||
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| "Blue Monday" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by New Order | ||||
| B-side | "Thieves Like Us" | |||
| Released | 1985 | |||
| Format | 7" | |||
| Recorded | 1982 | |||
| Genre | Alternative dance, New Wave | |||
| Length | 7:23 | |||
| Label | Tonpress - S-534 | |||
| Writer(s) | Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert | |||
| Producer | New Order | |||
| New Order singles chronology | ||||
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| "Blue Monday 1988" | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by New Order | |||||||||
| B-side | "Beach Buggy" | ||||||||
| Released | 25 April 1988 | ||||||||
| Format | 7", 10", 12", cassette, CD | ||||||||
| Recorded | 1982 | ||||||||
| Genre | Electronic | ||||||||
| Length | 4:07 (7") / 7:10 (12") | ||||||||
| Label | Factory - FAC 73R | ||||||||
| Writer(s) | Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert | ||||||||
| Producer | New Order | ||||||||
| New Order singles chronology | |||||||||
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| "Blue Monday-95" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by New Order | ||||
| from the album The Rest of New Order | ||||
| Released | 24 July 1995 | |||
| Format | 12", cassette, CD | |||
| Recorded | 1982 | |||
| Genre | Electronic | |||
| Length | 8:35 | |||
| Label | London | |||
| Writer(s) | Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert | |||
| Producer | New Order | |||
| New Order singles chronology | ||||
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"Blue Monday" is a single released in 1983 by British band New Order, and later remixed in 1988 and 1995. The song has been widely remixed and covered since its original release, and became a popular anthem in the dance club scene.
Contents |
At nearly seven-and-a-half minutes, "Blue Monday" is one of the longest tracks ever to chart in the UK, and is the biggest-selling 12" single of all time.[1][2] Despite selling well it was not eligible for an official gold disc because Factory Records was not a member of the British Phonographic Industry association. However, the Official UK Chart Company (UK Singles Chart) has estimated its total UK sales at over one million. In the all-time UK best-selling singles chart, published in 2002, "Blue Monday" came 76th.
The song begins with a distinctive semiquaver kick drum intro, programmed on an Oberheim DMX drum machine.[3] Gillian Gilbert eventually fades in a sequencer melody. According to band interviews in NewOrderStory, she did so at the wrong time, so the melody is out of sync with the beat; however, the band considered it to be a happy accident that contributed to the track's charm. The verse section features the song's signature throbbing synth bass line, played by a Moog Source, overlaid with Peter Hook's bass guitar leads. The synth bass line was sequenced on a Powertran Sequencer home built by Bernard.[4] Bernard Sumner delivers the lyrics in a deadpan manner. "Blue Monday" is an atypical hit song in that it does not feature a standard verse-chorus structure. After a lengthy introduction, the first and second verses are contiguous and are separated from the third verse only by a brief series of sound effects. A short breakdown section follows the third verse, which leads to an extended outro.
"Blue Monday" is often seen as one of the most important crossover tracks of the 1980s pop music scene. Synthpop had been a major force in British popular music for several years, but "Blue Monday" was arguably the first British dance record to exhibit an obvious influence from the New York club scene, particularly the work of producers like Arthur Baker (who collaborated on New Order's follow-up single "Confusion").
According to Bernard Sumner, "Blue Monday" was influenced by four songs: the arrangement came from "Dirty Talk", by Klein + M.B.O.; the signature bassline with octaves came from Sylvester's disco classic, "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)"; the house beat came from "Our Love", by Donna Summer; and the long keyboard pad on the intro and outro was sampled from the Kraftwerk song "Uranium", from the Radio-Activity album.[5] In an interview for Channel 4's countdown of the biggest selling UK singles, the band claimed to have written the song in response to crowd disappointment at the fact that they never played encores. This song, they say, allowed them to return to the stage, press play on a synthesiser and leave the stage again. An example of this happening appears on New Order's concert video Pumped Full of Drugs.
A popular misconception about "Blue Monday" holds that the single's die-cut sleeve, created by Factory designer Peter Saville, cost so much to produce that Factory Records actually lost money on each copy sold. It is unlikely that Factory Records could have sustained the losses implied, and the sleeve was soon changed to a similar non-die-cut design that would cost no more than a regular sleeve.[5] It is, however, probably true that New Order saw little profit from the single's success, since an investment in the Haçienda nightclub swallowed much of the money they made from their hit.[6]
Another notable feature of the sleeve is that it does not display either the group name nor song title in plain English anywhere. Instead the legend "FAC 73 BLUE MONDAY AND THE BEACH NEW ORDER" is represented in code by a series of coloured blocks. The key enabling this to be deciphered was printed on the back sleeve of the album, Power, Corruption & Lies. "Blue Monday" is one of three New Order releases from this time period to employ the colour code. The sleeve's spine simply reads "FAC SEVENTY THREE".
A music video for a shortened version of the original song was created in 1983, featuring military clips with false colour, simple computer-generated graphics such as colour blocks and geometric lines, digitised video of band members at very low resolution and framerate, and a short appearance of the game Zaxxon (reportedly the Apple II port). The colour blocks were created using Peter Saville's colour coded alphabet.[7]
The music video for "Blue Monday '88" (the Quincy Jones re-recording and mix of the song), shortened by several minutes and featuring added vocal effects, appears on the Substance video collection released as a companion to the album of the same name. It features sketches by photographer William Wegman and his Weimaraner dog named Fay Ray doing balancing acts intercut with hand-drawn animation by Robert Breer. The band members are shown standing around doing various tasks, such as walking a wooden plank over a floor that is painted blue, holding wire-mesh constructed art and milk crates over their faces, being hit by tennis balls, and standing still while they flip through various flip books (tying into the hand-drawn animation sequences).[8]
On the Australian show Rage, a video was shown containing footage taken from their Top of the Pops performance with the studio track dubbed over it. At other times, the aforementioned videos also get airings.
"Blue Monday" has been a hit several times in the UK. In 1983, it charted twice, initially reaching number 12, then re-entering the chart later in the year and climbing to number 9, helped by the fact that neither side of the single (the B-side "The Beach" was an instrumental re-working of "Blue Monday") was featured on the UK version of the group's subsequent album, Power, Corruption & Lies.
New Order appeared on the BBC's Top of the Pops, on 31 March 1983,[9] to promote the song. It had long been the show's policy that artists would mime to a backing track, but New Order insisted on performing Blue Monday live. The performance was dogged by technical problems, and was unrepresentative of the recording. In the words of drummer Stephen Morris, "Blue Monday was never the easiest song to perform, anyway, and everything went wrong. The synthesisers went awry. It sounded awful".[10] In 1985, "Blue Monday" and "Thieves Like Us" were officially released in Poland as a 7" single in different sleeve by Tonpress under license from Factory Records and sold over 50 000 copies and reached number 5 on end of year single chart [11] In 1988, "Blue Monday" was officially remixed by Quincy Jones and John Potoker under the title "Blue Monday 88" (with the instrumental flip being titled "Beach Buggy"). The single reached number 3 in the British charts, number 4 in the Australian charts, and topped the dance charts in the United States. A further official remix/reissue in 1995, with a mix by Hardfloor as the lead track, also made the British Top 20.
In 2008, Collector's Editions of all New Order's 1980s albums were released. The result is that remastered versions of the original 12" "Blue Monday" and its B-side "The Beach" appear on the Collector's Edition of Power, Corruption & Lies. Meanwhile, "Blue Monday '88" and "Beach Buggy" appear on the Collector's Edition of 1986's Brotherhood. "Blue Monday" appears on almost every New Order compilation. This is a brief rundown of what versions appear where.
Compilation appearences include
| Chart (1983) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australia ARIA Singles Chart | 13 |
| German Media Control Singles Chart[12] | 2 |
| Irish Singles Chart[13] | 4 |
| New Zealand RIANZ Singles Chart | 2 |
| UK Singles Chart[14] | 9 |
| UK Independent Singles Chart[15] | 1 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Club Play | 5 |
| End of year chart (1985) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Poland | 5 |
| Chart (1988, "Blue Monday 1988") | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australia ARIA Singles Chart | 4 |
| German Media Control Singles Chart[12] | 3 |
| Irish Singles Chart[13] | 2 |
| New Zealand RIANZ Singles Chart | 1 |
| UK Singles Chart[14] | 3 |
| UK Independent Singles Chart[15] | 1 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 68 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Club Play 1 | 1 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Singles Sales 1 | 9 |
Notes:
| Chart (1995, "Blue Monday-95") | Peak position |
|---|---|
| German Media Control Singles Chart[12] | 54 |
| Irish Singles Chart[13] | 29 |
| UK Singles Chart[14] | 17 |
| "Blue Monday" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Orgy | ||||
| from the album Candyass | ||||
| Released | December 14, 1998 | |||
| Format | Single | |||
| Genre | Alternative rock, industrial rock, house, techno[16] | |||
| Length | 31:46 | |||
| Label | Warner Bros./Reprise Records/Elementree Records | |||
| Producer | Josh Abraham; Orgy | |||
| Orgy singles chronology | ||||
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| "Blue Monday / Stitches" | |
|---|---|
| Single by Orgy | |
| Released | February 9, 1999 |
| Format | Single |
| Genre | Alternative rock, industrial rock, house, techno[16] |
| Length | 48:04 |
| Label | Warner Bros./Reprise Records/Elementree Records |
| Producer | Josh Abraham; Orgy |
"Blue Monday" is the second single of the rock band Orgy,[17]. A cover version of the New Order song it was released on December 14, 1998. Internationally, the song was a hit,[18] appearing on music charts worldwide. It has been attributed with providing industrial and metal music with a fresh connection.[19]
In an interview with Billboard Magazine guitarist Amir Derakh said that upon working on the song they "wanted to do the original 'Blue Monday' justice" and had expected more criticism. He went on to say that they felt lucky to have covered it and that they felt it could have been something that they had written.[20] The fact that their first major hit was a cover of the 80's electronica/dance song did not bother the band.[21]
Their first official single release featured various versions of "Blue Monday" and upon the success of the song the band decided to include their previous single "Stitches" on the second release. With the label's support this release was an enhanced CD that featured the music video for "Blue Monday" on February 9, 1999,[20] which was in Quicktime format. "Blue Monday" has been made into several dance remixes,[22] some which were produced to appeal to the underground dance club scene,[20] and was even advertised under "Club Mix" 2000, a popular dance compilation series.[23]
The music video for "Blue Monday" also appeared on several music television stations, and it was also released on vinyl.[24]
The song appeared on modern rock radio stations,[21] and was a hit on MTV;[18] it appeared on MTV's alternative music program 120 minutes[20] and TRL, in which it reached No. 8 on February 22, 1999.[25] The song was perceived as the bands gateway to success, allowing them to tour in Ozzfest.[26] and in the Family Values Tour[18] and led to the rerelease of the song "Stitches".[20] The song appeared in Spin Magazine's "Hits of the Year" for 1999.[27] "Blue Monday" is also said to have helped pave the way for the cyberpunk trend, as best exemplified in the popularity of the movie The Matrix, which appeared soon afterwards.[28] In an interview of Joel Gallen in Los Angeles Magazine, the music supervisors were discussing the use of Orgy's "Blue Monday" for a football scene in Not Another Teen Movie, among others.[29] Stating that the song "had energy", they eventually selected it for the movie,[30] and it appeared in the soundtrack as well.[31]
"Blue Monday" charted internationally, some of which included CMJ's "Commercial Alternative Cuts"[32] and Billboard's Alternative, Pop, and Dance song charts as well as others. It also appeared in Time Magazine[33] and Newsweek[34] in 2000 as featured song clips.
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic (Blue Monday(single)) | [35] |
| Allmusic (Blue Monday / Stitches) | [36] |
"Blue Monday" has been called the "aggro-fied-for-the-90's" version of New Orders' song,[22] and it is considered to be part of a resurgence of new wave covers in gloomcore, along with Dope's cover of Dead or Alive's "You spin me round".[37] Many critics attribute the success of the album Candyass to "Blue Monday", and some anticipated that Orgy would become a one-hit wonder, believing that it would be difficult for the band to followup with another hit song.[20] Many believed it to be their best song.[38] Porter W. Richards of Sputnik felt that even though many of the songs off of Candyass sounded similar, "Blue Monday" was a great song that should not be overlooked.[19]
In a January 2000 Spin Magazine interview, Buckcherry's vocalist Josh Todd and guitarist Keith Nelson did not speak highly of the song, likening its sound to a Nine Inch Nails rip-off and calling the sound "mechanical".[27] The song is also viewed somewhat negatively by author of the comic book series Blue Monday Chynna Clugston, who in an interview also expresses dislike for the misconception that she borrowed the title for her book.[39]
| Blue Monday (single) | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Mix | Length | ||||||
| 1. | "Blue Monday" | Radio Edit | 3:48 | ||||||
| 2. | "Blue Monday" | Album Version | 4:26 | ||||||
| 3. | "Blue Monday" | Club 69 | 8:45 | ||||||
| 4. | "Blue Monday" | Club 69 Dub | 8:14 | ||||||
| 5. | "Blue Monday" | Optical Vocal | 6:33 | ||||||
Information on Blue Monday (single).[40]
| Blue Monday/Stitches | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Mix | Length | ||||||
| 1. | "Blue Monday" | Single | 4:29 | ||||||
| 2. | "Blue Monday" | Optical Vocal | 6:40 | ||||||
| 3. | "Stitches" | Green Velvet | 6:13 | ||||||
| 4. | "Blue Monday" | Club 69 | 8:43 | ||||||
| 5. | "Blue Monday" | Club 69 Dub | 8:13 | ||||||
| 6. | "Blue Monday" | Optical Instrumental | 6:41 | ||||||
| 7. | "Blue Monday" | DJ Dan Remix | 9:32 | ||||||
| Chart (1999) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 56[41] |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 Singles Sales | 30 |
| U.S. Billboard Pop Songs | 32[41] |
| U.S. Billboard Alternative Songs | 4[41] |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks | 18 |
| U.S. Billboard Dance/Club Play Songs | 2[41] |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Canadian Digital Singles | 5 |
| CMJ Commercial Alternative Charts | 4[32] |
| Australia ARIA Top 50 Singles | 36[40] |
| New Zealand RIANZ Top 40 Singles | 30[40] |
| Germany Media Control Top 100 Singles | 83 |
| "Blue Monday" | |
|---|---|
| Single by Flunk | |
| from the album Blue Monday | |
| Released | April 8, 2002 (Norway) June 3, 2002 (UK /Worldwide) |
| Format | CD |
| Genre | Electronic |
| Label | Beatservice Records BS053 (CD) |
In this version, Flunk slows down Blue Monday making it a popular hit for Flunk,[43] based in part on the song's wide recognition. The lyrics become the focus for this version rather than the danceable beat (which was emphasized in the original version). The single was well received by electronic music critics [43] and was included in the 2004 movie Walking Tall starring Dwayne Johnson. The song was subsequently remixed, with at least 7 remixes along with the original version available. The original release was on the 2002 EP titled Blue Monday.
| Preceded by "Prove Your Love" by Taylor Dayne |
Billboard Hot Dance Club Play number-one single ("Blue Monday 1988", with "Touched by the Hand of God") 30 April 1988 |
Succeeded by "Adventure" by Eleanor |
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