SONG OF THE DAY

“Blue Monday” by New Order ( [single], Factory Records, 1983).

INTERESTING FACTS (from wikipedia)

– “Blue Monday” is a dance song recorded in 1982 and originally released as a single in 1983 by British band New Order, and later remixed for further releases 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.

– At nearly seven-and-a-half minutes, “Blue Monday” is one of the longest tracks ever to chart in the UK (behind The Orb’s 40 minute opus “Blue Room” and Laurie Anderson’s’ “O Superman”).

– It is recognised as the biggest selling 12″ single of all time (a fact that is mentioned in the film 24 Hour Party People).

– “Blue Monday” is often seen as one of the most important crossover tracks of the 1980’s 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 was sampled from the Kraftwerk song “Uranium”, from the Radio-Activity album.

– 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 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, digitized video of band members at very low resolution and frame rate, 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.

– “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.