New Order – Blue Monday
#quotefromthe80s
I still find it so hard
To say what I need to say
But I'm quite sure that you'll tell me
Just how I should feel today
#BlueMonday #NewOrder
It is not easy to say when dance music was born, or when a new trend crept between new wave and pop. Supported by technological progress which made increasingly accessible synthesizers and electronic drums available, this trend made the concept of bpm fundamental, and allowed the birth of a truly new genre. Certainly, in March 1983 a song marked a real boundary, and then clearly indicated that the boundary had been crossed, and we had therefore entered the glorious territory of dance music.
The song was of course Blue Monday by New Order, an English band that came from the world of post-punk. The three men in the group were in fact part of Joy Division, together with the group’s leader, Ian Curtis, who had committed suicide in May 1980. Following this tragic event the other three members, singer Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris disbanded the group and re-founded another after a few months, also bringing on board keyboardist Gillian Gilbert, who was Morris’ girlfriend.
The record company accepted their request to close the story of Joy Division and adopt a completely new name. Their manager (who had obviously also been the manager of Joy Division) chose the name New Order, but there are clues of a real agreement between the four original members of Joy Division: if someone had left the group, the others would no longer use the name Joy Division, but would use the name New Order. They probably didn’t think about the suicide of one of the members, but in fact they honored the pact they had made years before.
New Order, however, distinguished themselves enough from Joy Division, perhaps also because music and times were in full evolution, and the post-punk and dark period was giving way to pop, so the four boys from the Manchester area adapted very well to the new trends.
Blue Monday was different from all other songs, something truly never heard before, right from the first notes. Or rather, from the first hits of the hammering electronic drums: this very characteristic rhythm was certainly one of the reasons for the great success of the hit, and made it truly become one of the reference songs for the whole world of synth-pop and dance. We can say that it was likely the first song of this genre to have visibility in pop charts and on television, because just two weeks after the release of their album New Order were performing on Top of the Pops.
We might think that New Order had also combined such a futuristic and revolutionary sound with an innovative and perhaps space-age look, as Rockets had done with Galactica or even Kraftwerk across all their production, but they actually showed up dressed more or less like the teenagers who were watching them on TV or like their older brothers: shirts, denim jackets, natural colored hair, nothing that recalled a world of electronic brains or aliens.
Even reading the lyrics, Blue Monday is probably not so out of the ordinary, even if some verses are certainly profound and not at all banal. New Order have actually never been too precise about the meaning of this song and have always downplayed it by saying that they paid attention more to the sounds and the music, and then the words came by themselves; therefore, there was no point in trying to interpret every single verse of the song.
This approach reminds of other artists, such as David Byrne with his Talking Heads in Burning Down the House, where the lyrics including some puns are actually dragged by an overwhelming music, or like Duran Duran, the icons of the decade, with Simon Le Bon who always admitted that he preferred verses and words that sounded good in a certain context, even if they perhaps didn’t have a real solid meaning.
The theme of the song, however, seems to be a failed relationship that is about to end, with the protagonist poised between the moment when we acknowledge our disappointment, and the first moment of rebirth where we still have to think and draw our near future. It must be said that in the 80s some claimed that the true protagonist of the song was not a woman, but an addiction, which had voided the protagonist of all energy and positivity.
The song therefore had nothing to do with today’s concept of “Blue Monday”, that is, that day in January considered to be the saddest day of the year. Indeed, the title came from a book that one of the members was reading, where an illustration greeted the advent of the washing machine in homes with a “Goodbye, Blue Monday!” referring to housewives not having to wash clothes manually any longer. In any case, in a song that lasts for more than seven minutes, the title never appears in the lyrics.
The song quickly became an international hit for a number of reasons that actually made it absolutely futuristic. Meanwhile, the cover was totally unusual and looked like a 5.25-inch floppy disk. The reproduction was done so well, with metal inserts and special processes, that the cost of the cover alone exceeded the selling price of the record, and therefore the record company actually lost money for each copy printed.
This was tolerated for an initial period, until the unexpected success of the song made it clear to everyone that the production company would end up upside down, and so they decided to create a second cover very similar to the first, but with significantly lower production costs. Furthermore, the covers of this song did not even indicate the title and authors, but only had a code made up of colored squares on one side. The back of the disc had the rules for cracking the code. All of this made Blue Monday absolutely a song of the future.
The original video from 1983 was a bit upsetting: in addition to truly primordial computer graphics, such as lines and polygons drawn on the screen, we see rather dark images reworked in a futuristic and in general also confusing way. We see advancing tanks, missiles, planes, scenes of protests in the streets, alternating with scenes of New Order, overexposed and barely recognizable because of these graphing elaborations.
What really made the song an unforgettable success, as we said, was the music and above all the rhythm. There was also a bit of coincidence, as keyboardist Gillian admitted in an interview: in order to program the drums and other electronic instruments, since today’s visual input methods were not available yet, it was necessary to insert long series of numbers representing notes or sounds. Gillian had put together many sellotaped sheets of paper with the sequences of numbers to enter, but during the process she had a moment of distraction and forgot a note.
This small factual error led to the instruments no longer being in sync, because one was slightly ahead of the others vdue to the missed note, but New Order found that the final effect was absolutely innovative and pleasant, and decided to leave the things as they were without correcting the error. In the same interview, moreover, Gillian recalls how the group recorded and processed the strangest and most unconventional sounds, bordering on annoyance, for entire days to have material to experiment with.
Blue Monday’s success truly exceeded all expectations: not only did it enter two separate top ten periods in 1983, and not only was it unanimously indicated as the primordial origin of all dance music, but it was also re-recorded at least twice by New Order themselves, in 1988 and 1995, and sensationally returned to the charts on both occasions. The 1988 version was also equipped with a new, very special video, shot in the unmistakable style of director Michael H. Shamberg – be careful, this is not the Michael Shamberg who produced films like A Fish Called Wanda; there is a difference like a “H.” between the director and the producer.
Michael H. Shamberg had an unmistakable style made up of surreal images and attitudes and poses between the futuristic and the grotesque – all seasoned with rather bright colors. In particular, the video of Blue Monday 88 features among the protagonists a beautiful dog, a Weimaraner owned by one of the photographers. The dog is filmed in curious and surreal poses – but don’t worry, the dog looks to have fun and clearly shows, as often happens, the smartest guy of the group, with all due respect to New Order. Watching this video, other surreal videos probably come to mind such as True Faith by New Order or some videos by Grace Jones, and it is absolutely no coincidence, because they are all videos directed by Michael H. Shamberg.
In short, Blue Monday in a very short time has truly become a milestone in the history of pop and especially dance music, and this is demonstrated by the fact that it is still the best-selling 12″ mix in history, with over one and a half million copies sold between all the various editions over the years.
New Order on Wikipedia
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