“Blue Monday” (Live at Alexandra Palace) by New Order, Monday, July 18, 2022

New Order formed in 1980 after the three remaining members of the post-punk band Joy Division lost their lead singer Ian Curtis to suicide. Success wasn't instant for New Order with the start of the new band. New Order's sound was distinct from Joy Division's with the inclusion of keyboardist Gillian Gilbert and a growing penchant for synthesizers and electronic dance music. The band's breakthrough success came prior to the release of their second record, Power, Lies & Corruption with the release of their long-play (12") single "Blue Monday," which took dance clubs around the world by storm, and even helped to fund the band's own dance club in Manchester called The Haçienda, a dance club named after the word for a Spanish plantation.

I SEE A SHIP IN THE HARBOUR. New Order spent time in the clubs in New York listening to the latest disco prior to recording their Power, Lies & Corruption. According to lead singer Bernard Sumner, the music in those clubs produced tones he had never heard before. The band then set a new goal: they wanted to produce a hit that could be heard in the dance halls. So the band got to work back in England at one of Pink Floyd's studios using outdated '70s recording technology to produce their ultramodern 1983 classics. "Blue Monday" was a feat of layering rhythms and synthesizers. The band felt that the song didn't fit musically or thematically on their second record, so they decided to release the song as a 12" single prior to the LP's release. "Blue Monday" was a smash hit and became the biggest selling 12" single of all time. The band received mainstream success in the UK, even performing on Top of the Pops. But because "Blue Monday" relied so much on programming, it wasn't a very interesting song to watch live. "Blue Monday" uses repetition and slight variance in that repetition to keep the audience in a trance like state. The 7:29 song was a barrier for listening for me at first, but now I barely notice that the time has passed!

I THOUGHT I WAS MISTAKEN. Like most of New Order's songs, the lyrics are only a distant second to the importance of the music. The lyrics about a narcissistic listener who gaslights the speaker starts to become clear with more listens. Sumner said that the title comes from Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, but the lyrics don't seem to match the book's themes. Blue Monday is a day, according to pop psychology, on which many suicides take place. Blue Monday is the third Monday of the year, and after the excitements and disappointments from the holiday season coming to an end, may people experience a sadness or depression strong on that day. Of course, being Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, that prevents me from covering "Blue Monday" on that day. But learning today how the song's bequest on electronic music make it worth breaking my usual convention of covering songs on the most appropriate day. The song that was created by a band composed of heterosexuals inspired by the music of gay clubs. The track becomes a huge hit in clubs both gay and straight, and establishes New Order, not as hit making machine, but a creditable dance/rock band nonetheless. "Blue Monday" becomes the standard for DJs from the '80s to today, influencing Pet Shop Boys to Skrillex. In a way, the song helped to define the EDM music of multiple eras and has been interloped in songs such as Britney Spears' "Work Bitch" and more notably in Rihanna's "Shut Up and Drive." I guess with beats like this, it's not an average Monday after all!

Live: