Blue Monday

Blue Monday
New order
publication	March 7, 1983
length	7:29 (Original Version) 4:09 (Edited Version)
Genre (s)	Synth pop , new wave , electronic dance music
Author (s)	Bernard Sumner , Peter Hook , Stephen Morris , Gillian Gilbert
Label	Factory Records , Tonpress
album	Power, Corruption & Lies

Blue Monday is the most successful and best-known song of the British new wave - band New Order and is due to its innovative sound technology and early sampling -Sounds as a pioneering piece of electronic dance music and synth pop as well as a pioneer of techno . The original version of the piece appeared in 1983 on the 12 ″ maxi single of the same name . With over a million copies, the record is one of the best-selling 12 ″ singles. The track itself (including the '88 and '95 remixes ) was estimated to have sold over 10 million copies.

history

With a length of seven minutes and 29 seconds in the 1983 original version, Blue Monday is one of the longest tracks to find its way into the British charts , reaching number twelve in the UK Top 40 in 1983 (as a return to number nine, number two in the German charts ) and is considered to be one of the most played dance tracks . The commercial success failed to materialize : Since the independent label Factory Records , which at the time produced all New Order tracks, was not part of the British Phonographic Industry , the association of the British record industry , Blue Monday was not legitimized, with a golden one Record to be awarded. Factory boss Tony Wilson complained that the high production costs of the Maxi led to a loss for the label: the elaborate record cover designed by the British designer Peter Saville in the form of a 5.25 ″ floppy disk turned out to be due to the high production costs Cover were specially dies customized - more expensive than planned, in addition, the record sleeve wore off quickly and often went battered over the counter. In the legend that followed about the record, critics and the music press even speculated that Factory and New Order would have paid for every record sold. Initially, the New Order members did little to further promote the song by refusing to release Blue Monday on an album for years . It was not until the album retrospective Substance (1987) and the version remixed by Quincy Jones in 1988 that the title was once again successful in the charts.

The music

The four-verses song begins with a hammering sixteenth notes - Drumcomputer -Beat ( Oberheim DMX), which in the keyboard player Gillian Gilbert slowly a melody as Sequencer - Loop fades. According to the band members, it did this in the wrong place, so that the melody runs asynchronously to the beat; the supposed “mistake” was ultimately retained as a welcome characteristic. The piece builds up in the following cascading ; after an unusually long intro consisting of a pulsating Moog synthesizer sequence and Peter Hook bass -line and Hi-Hat - Breaks , finally, the vocal part of the piece, without emotion and gloomy performed by starting Bernard Sumner . Atypical for a "hit song", Sumner, as the songwriter, did without a standard verse as a refrain . The following is a staccato sound effects: a series of drum beats that resemble a machine-gun fire, and the then popular synth pitch bending -Sound a "crashing the aircraft," the man - relatively the same time as the date of origin - even in the disco-Long version of Soft Cell Tainted Love (1981). The piece culminates in a spherical chorus sample and multi-track overlays ( overdubs ) of synthesizer melody and bass line, until it finally fades out .

According to Bernard Sumner's statement, Blue Monday was influenced by four pieces: The arrangement comes from Dirty Talk by Klein & MBO ; the octaves of the distinctive bass line are taken from Sylvester James ' You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) ; the house beat came from Donna Summers Our Love and the long keyboard intro was inspired by Kraftwerk's piece Uranium from the album “ Radio-Aktivity ”. In an interview with Channel 4 , New Order said the song was written in response to their disappointed audience due to the fact that they never play encores. This song now allows them to simply go on stage one more time, press "Play" on the synthesizer and leave the stage again.

Title and text

As with most pieces by New Order, the title has no relation to the lyrics, which in turn leaves plenty of room for interpretation; Although Sumner rarely speaks publicly about his lyrics , a reference to the suicide of the Joy Division singer Ian Curtis and statements about the effects of Curtis was constructed, as has been the case more often since the former Joy Division band members began again as New Order 'Subordinate death to those who remained. Likewise, hidden allusions to drug experiments were suspected in the text, and that the band had been on an LSD trip during production . The group's “disinformation policy”, which has always been stringent, did the rest to spread speculation. At that time, another interpretation approach even made a reference to the Falklands War due to the words ship (ship) , harbor (harbor) and beach (beach) and pointed to the many military elements in the 1983 original video clip for the song, which, among other things, featured a harrier - Fighter aircraft shows which played an important role in the conflict.

The cover

Blue Monday's famous floppy disk cover went down in package design . It was designed by the graphic artist Peter Saville from Manchester . Saville, known for his reduced and minimalist style, was responsible for the corporate design of most of Factory Records' productions in the late 1970s and 1980s . The black cover has neither the band name nor the title and, in addition to the oval punchings typical of a 5.25 ″ diskette, only a code made up of colored blocks, encoded as "FAC 73 BLUE MONDAY AND THE BEACH NEW ORDER". Saville also used the concept of coding for the subsequent album Power, Corruption & Lies , on the back of which the deciphering of the code is printed, as well as for the follow-up single Confusion . The original cover with the punchings was soon exchanged for a printed edition due to the high production costs and is now a sought-after collector's item among collectors.

Official publications

1983

Blue Monday achieved positions in the English charts several times. When it was first released on March 7, 1983, it reached number 12 and in the same year got a re-entry at number 9 in the UK charts, which was due to the fact that neither Blue Monday nor the B-side The Beach ( an instrumental version of Blue Monday ) appeared on the follow-up album Power, Corruption & Lies . Blue Monday and The Beach appeared as bonus tracks only on the US release.

On 31 March 1983 New Order in should BBC telecast Top of the Pops occur around Blue Monday to apply; unusually the band insisted on playing the song live , which clashed with the playback concept of the show, and so it should come to a poor performance. Drummer Stephen Morris then complained that Blue Monday was probably not the easiest piece to play live. In an interview with The Guardian , he said, “It had to go wrong; the synthesizers ran crooked and it sounded awful ” .

Blue Monday 88 / Remix 1995

In the spring of 1988, Quincy Jones and sound engineer John Potoker set about remixing the song under the title "Blue Monday 88" and at the same time releasing an instrumental remix of the new version entitled Beach Buggy . The single reached number 3 on the UK charts. Another version, which also hit the charts, was created in mid-1995 as a new remix of the German techno project Hardfloor .

Videos

The video clip from 1983 with a shortened version of the song is a film collage of military recordings in false colors and simple computer-generated graphics such as colored blocks and geometric lines, which are based on an experimental font design by the graphic artist Peter Saville; you can also see screenshots of the computer game Zaxxon and low-resolution digitized video shots of the band members.

The four-minute music video for "Blue Monday 88" also consists of a short version of the song, but contains additional voice effects. The clip was published on the subsequent video collection Substance for the album of the same name. In the seemingly surreal video, real film alternates with cartoon and animation in fast cuts . Short sequences show the Weimaraner dog Fay Wray by the American photographer William Wegman , who became world famous for his dog photos. Fay Wray performs balancing acts on balls or stacked chairs, which in turn are interrupted by spontaneous hand-drawn animations by the animated film artist Robert Breer ; meanwhile - again as a real film - the band members are shown doing absurd things, e.g. B. to run back and forth over a wooden plank in a blue-painted room, to look through the grille of a laundry basket or a wire construction and the like. a. They are encircled or hit by tennis balls; Finally, stand or sit in the room and scroll through large flip books in which the animation sequence continues. Finally, the video ends with a close-up of the Weimaraner's paw balancing on a tennis ball.

Unofficial remix and cover versions (selection)

• In 1983 Divine released the single Love Reaction , which had strong stylistic similarities with Blue Monday . New Order took legal action against the publication on allegations of plagiarism , but the charges were dropped. Love Reaction reached number 65 on the UK charts.
• In 1990 the electronic band Front Line Assembly sampled the song for their single Iceolate .
• In 1992 Electroset released a cover version called How Does It Feel? and reached number 30 on the UK charts. Ed Ball's band The Times released the French cover version Lundi Bleu .
• In 1998 the American band Orgy released one of the most successful cover versions.
• Also in 1998 Viper released a single called Blue Sunshine . The track was a remix of Eddy Grant 's "Walking on Sunshine" from 1978 and Blue Monday .
• 2001 came out a remix under the title The Picard Song (after Jean-Luc Picard from " Raumschiff Enterprise - The Next Century ") out.
• In 2002 the song was combined in a mashup mix by the Belgian group Soulwax with the song Can't Get You Out of My Head by Kylie Minogue and as a popular club and radio mix with the titles Can't Get Blue Monday Out of My Head or Can't Get You Out of My Head known on a Blue Monday . Kylie Minogue herself sang the track live at the BRIT Awards and also sang some of Bernard's original parts. This resulted in Kylie Minogue vs. New order .
• In 2002 the Norwegian band Flunk released the song on their debut album "For sleepyheads only" and also released it as a single.
• In 2005 there were several Latin American Electrotango remixes, including a. by the band Tanghetto , who secured a position in the alternative US radio charts.
• In 2006 the French group Nouvelle Vague released a cover version on their album Bande a Part .
• In 2007, Blue Monday was sampled for the song Shut Up & Drive by Rihanna ; the Welsh rock band Lostprophets released a version of the song.
• The German-Kurdish house DJ Kurd Maverick released his version of the title in 2009.
• The synth pop band And One released the cover version of the classic on their concept live album Bodypop 1 1/2 in 2009 as a live recording of their 2008 tour The Cover Lover Super Show .
• The trailer for the film Wonder Woman 1984 was released on December 8, 2019 . A cover version of Blue Monday by the Hamburg composer and producer Sebastian Böhm was used.

Influences and aftermath

• The Manchester band Happy Mondays , who were also represented at Factory, refer to the song as a direct inspiration for their own naming. Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook produced some tracks for the Happy Mondays back then.
• The popularity and simplicity of the song made Blue Monday one of the demo scene's favorite pieces for their own musically based computer animations.
• The originality of the 1983 version of Blue Monday has inspired many more artists on art projects. The Blue Monday Owners Club z. B. collects photographs from collectors of the original floppy disk.
• New Order made a 30-second commercial for Sunkist with the song . Sumner was reluctant to do the spot so while he was singing, a sign saying "$ 200,000" was placed in front of him while he was recording to keep him happy.
• The song also appeared in a Mars - Advertising on.
• The song, or the record itself, has been used in many films and commercials:
  • In the zombie film parody Shaun of the Dead , a Blue Monday record from the record collection of the main character Shaun is thrown at invading zombies. Shaun sighs and shouts that this was an original pressing.
  • The song appears in the movie Toys with Robin Williams .
  • In the movie The Wedding Singer (The Wedding Singer) with Adam Sandler , who plays in the 1980s, is one of Blue Monday for the soundtrack.
  • The mash-up version with Kylie Minogue was used for the British gangster film Layer Cake .
• The song was part of the soundtrack of the computer games FIFA 2005 and Forza Horizon .

Track list

Blue Monday 1983

1. "Blue Monday" (7:29)
2. "The Beach" (7:19)

Blue Monday 88

1. "Blue Monday 1988 [12 ″ Version]" (7:09)
2. "Beach Buggy" (6:52)
3. "Blue Monday 1988 [7 ″ Version]" (4:09)

Blue Monday 1988 (USA)

1. "Blue Monday 1988 [12 ″ Mix]" (7:09)
2. "Touched By The Hand Of God [Single Version]" (4:10)
3. "Blue Monday 1988 [Single Version]" (4:10)
4. "Blue Monday 1988 [Dub Version]" (7:16)

Blue Monday-95 (UK CD)

1. "Blue Monday [1983 12 ″ Version]" (7:29)
2. "Blue Monday [Hardfloor Mix]" (8:34)
3. "Blue Monday [Manuela Mix]" (7:31)
4. "Blue Monday [Andrea Mix]" (8:26)
5. "Blue Monday [Plutone Mix]" (6:29)
6. "Blue Monday [Starwash Mix]" (5:29)
7. "Blue Monday [Hawtin Mix]" (8:02)

Blue Monday also appeared on various New Wave samplers and on compilations from New Order:

• 1987: Substance 1987 - original 12 ″ version
• 1994: Best of New Order - 1988 7 ″ version
• 1995: Rest of New Order - Hardfloor Mix
• 2002: International - original 12 ″ version
• 2002: Retro - Original 12 ″ Version and Jam & Spoon Manuela Mix
• 2005: Singles - Original 12 ″ Version [without opening sequence]

Trivia

• Fats Domino had a UK single chart placement at position 23 with a song of the same name in 1957.

Individual references and sources

1. ↑ Hamburger Morgenpost, article from October 12, 2005
2. ↑ 1000songs.de ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Discotheque of the Süddeutsche Zeitung , 1983 
3. ↑ www.bluemondayownersclub.com ( Memento from October 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ www.soundonsound.com - Article, April 2004
5. ↑ [1]
6. ^ Interview The Guardian
7. ↑ Sunday's Listen Up - "Blue Monday". In: uthegamers.com. December 15, 2019, accessed December 30, 2019 . 
8. ↑ Jerry Brown: Wonder Woman 1984 trailer song is a remix of New Order's Blue Monday. In: Monsters and Critics. Digital Minefield Ltd, December 9, 2019, accessed May 3, 2020 (American English). 

Web links

• Information and cover pictures for the Blue Monday singles from 1983 , 1988 and 1995
• Fan Site including Lyrics, Images, and Interviews ( Memento from November 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
• Mirko Hall: Blue Monday in the song dictionary of the German Folk Song Archive ; Retrieved June 25, 2012.
• FM4 Davidecks - Urbalized Special: The History Of Blue Monday By New Order