If you mention “Blue Monday” to anyone in January, they’re likely to think of it as “the most depressing day of the year”. This is the third Monday of the month (which falls this year on January 20), and the phenomenon came about as a result of a holiday-promoting campaign by holiday company Sky Travel in 2005; using factors such as the weather, the time since Christmas and levels of household debt, it was “calculated” as the year’s gloomiest day and therefore a good time to book a holiday. The idea has been used by many others since, but the “science” behind it is nonsense: it is a PR stunt. The label sticks in the mind, though, largely thanks to New Order, whose 1983 hit of the same name was a watershed moment for British pop.
“Blue Monday” was written in much duller surroundings than its futuristic sound suggests: a grim rehearsal room in the band’s native Manchester, with a cemetery behind it. At the time, New Order were trying to cement their band’s identity through new ideas.
The band had been influenced by the electro sound coming from Manhattan’s early 1980s club scene. Singer/guitarist Bernard Sumner was interested in electronics, and had soldered together a primitive sequencer. Keyboardist Gillian Gilbert was responsible for inputting the melody manually when “Blue Monday” was committed to tape, but she missed a note out, giving the track its skewed eeriness.
“Blue Monday”’s reference points have been discussed by the band ever since. Its stuttering drum-machine beat mimicked one on Donna Summer’s 1979 track, “Our Love”. Its bassline was influenced by Sylvester’s disco hit, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”, and a twanging bass figure from Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack to For a Few Dollars More.
A robotic choir sound was sampled directly from Kraftwerk’s 1975 album track, “Uranium”, using a machine New Order had acquired, the Emulator. “Bernard and Stephen [Morris, fellow band member] had worked out how to use it by spending hours recording farts,” Gilbert explained in a 2013 Guardian interview.
The track was released only as a 12-inch, and its iconic sleeve was designed by artist Peter Saville to look like a computer floppy disc, complete with die-cut sections. It also featured coloured blocks and a key that spelt out the band’s name and tracks. Their label, Factory Records, sold the single at a retail price of £1, but each cost £1.10 to produce. It sold more than 500,000 in this version, a loss of £50,000 for Factory.
Five years later, the band were offered $200,000 to re-record it, with bouncy lyrics, for a Sunkist advertising campaign. They tried: Sumner couldn’t stop laughing. Manager Rob Gretton quickly cancelled the deal.
“Blue Monday”’s appeal has barely waned since. A 1988 remix to accompany New Order’s hits album, Substance, was a UK number three, and topped the dance charts in the US. Other versions include an 808 State 1988 acid house mix, a 1998 gothic-rock stomper by alternative metal band Orgy, a fluttery 2002 guitar version by Norwegian indie band Flunk, and composer Hannah Peel’s beautiful recreation of it on music boxes on 2010’s Rebox LP.
Kylie Minogue also brought “Blue Monday” back with a bang in her performance at the 2002 Brit Awards, mixing it in with her number one single, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”, at the height of the pop craze for mash-ups. She later released “Can’t Get Blue Monday Out of My Head” as a B-side. New Order even sampled her version at their 2005 Coachella gig.
The phrase Blue Monday itself, though, pre-dates the band by many years. Morris had seen it in 1982 in the Kurt Vonnegut novel he was reading, 1973’s Breakfast of Champions. (“It said ‘Goodbye, Blue Monday’,” Gilbert said. “It was a reference to the invention of the washing machine, which improved housewives’ lives.”)
This might, in turn, have referred to the Fats Domino song of the same name, a US number five hit in 1956. His “Blue Monday” was much like the one Sky Travel envisaged years later: it had him “workin’ like a dog all day”.
New Order’s was more melancholy: inspired by Sumner’s dislike of doing press interviews (“And still I find it so hard/To say what I need to say”), and the poetic escape of the beach and the sea. Sumner has now long owned a boat, and sails every summer. Perhaps this was a vision he clung to in early 1983, as the icy beat of “Blue Monday” motored on.
What are your memories of ‘Blue Monday’? Let us know in the comments section below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Rhino; Mercury Records; London Music Stream; EMI Music Publishing Italia Srl; Parlophone UK; London Records; Elementree/Reprise; Beatservice Records; My Own Pleasure; Warner Music Group - X5 Music Group; Falling Domino Stones Music Recordings
Picture credit: Kevin Cummins/Getty Images