The Story Behind The Song: The happy accidents that led New Order to create ‘Blue Monday’
Few songs are quite as ingrained into the British cultural consciousness as New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’. Between pulsing synths and Kraftwerkian choirs, the 1983 track found its way into the hearts and record collections of millions and secured its place as the highest-selling 12-inch single ever. Four decades later, ‘Blue Monday’ is still just as well-loved and lauded as it was on its first release. But how did New Order pen such an enduring and endearing hit?
The creation of ‘Blue Monday’ began in Manchester’s Cheetham Hill, where the members of New Order would conceive a future synth-pop classic. Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris were the “instigators”, as Peter Hook remembered during a conversation with The Guardian. “It was their enthusiasm for new technology,” he stated.
Pulling influences from Kraftwerk and Donna Summer, the band played around with synths and samplers with abandon, but they stumbled upon some issues when it came to recording the track at Britannia Row studios. “The technology was forever breaking down and the studio was really archaic,” Hook recalled.
Though this presented issues for the band at the time, it actually led to a number of happy accidents that would contribute to the sonic innovation at the heart of ‘Blue Monday’. Drum patterns were disrupted and synthesisers left out of sync, but this only served the track. “The synthesiser melody is slightly out of sync with the rhythm,” Gillian Gilbert explained to The Guardian, “That was an accident.”
“It was my job to programme the entire song from beginning to end,” he explained, “which had to be done manually, by inputting every note. I had the sequence all written down on loads of A4 paper Sellotaped together the length of the recording studio, like a huge knitting pattern. But I accidentally left a note out, which skewed the melody.”
The band found that the skewed melody created a cooler, syncopated rhythm that provided ‘Blue Monday’ with a new edge. Hoping to emulate the robotic stylings of electronic predecessors Kraftwerk, the band used an Emulator 1, testing it with fart sounds before using it “to add snatches of choir-like voices from Kraftwerk’s album Radioactivity, as well as recordings of thunder.”
Another mistake led to Sumner being forced to take on the vocal part initially intended for a robot-like voice. After a recording of the latter idea was, again, accidentally wiped, Sumner took on the lyrics and provided the track with a slightly more human quality, in contrast with the overly electronic soundscape. Still, his delivery matches the directness of the synths that surround it, his words just as blunt and striking.
The story behind the song for ‘Blue Monday’, as far as public knowledge goes, takes place primarily in the studio, as the lyrics were intended to be vague. “How does it feel to treat me like you do,” Sumner asks in the iconic opening moments. If vague was what New Order were going for, they certainly succeeded. The track allows you to paste your own meaning onto it – a difficult relationship, the band’s interactions with the media, drug abuse – perhaps a contributing factor in its unparalleled popularity.
Between a series of happy accidents in the studio, some straightforward yet flexible lyrics, and a penchant for Kraftwerk, New Order gifted music with one of the greatest songs of all time and earned the envy of their inspirations. According to Hook, Kraftwerk even took a trip to Britannia Row to “emulate ‘Blue Monday’. They gave up after four or five days.”
