The roots of this timeless electro classic lay in the purchase of a brand new Emulator 1 sampling keyboard costing £4,000 and a cache of favourite records. According to Bernard Sumner “The arrangement came from Dirty Talk by Klein & MBO, the beat came from a track, Our Love off a Donna Summer LP, there was a sample from Radioactivity by Kraftwerk, and the general influence on the style of the song was Sylvester’s You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).”
The song begins with a distinctive kick drum intro. Eventually, Gillian Gilbert fades in a sequencer melody. According to band interviews in NewOrderStory, she did so at the wrong time, so the melody is out of sync with the beat; however, the band considered it to be a happy accident that contributed to the track’s charm. The verse section features the song’s signature throbbing synth bass line overlaid with Peter Hook’s bass guitar leads. Blue Monday is an atypical hit song in that it does not feature a standard verse-chorus structure: after a lengthy introduction, the first and second verses are contiguous and are separated from the third verse only by a brief series of sound effects. A short breakdown section follows the third verse, which leads to an extended outro. The b-side, The Beach, is an instrumental version of the a-side with added studio effects.
Fac 73 New Order Blue Monday
It could be argued that Blue Monday is one of the most important crossover tracks of the 1980s pop music scene. Synthpop had been a major force in British popular music for several years, but Blue Monday is arguably the first British dance record to exhibit an obvious influence from the New York club scene, particularly the work of producers like Arthur Baker (who collaborated on New Order’s follow-up single Confusion, Fac 93 and again on the single Thieves Like Us, Fac 103).
Fac 93 New Order Confusion
The single’s complicated die-cut sleeve (with silver inner sleeve) was based on the Emulator’s 5-inch floppy disk, epitomising its metronomic, proto-techno feel. It was designed by Peter Saville and allegedly cost so much to produce that Factory Records actually lost money on each copy sold. The sleeve was soon changed to a similar non-die-cut design that would cost no more than a regular sleeve. The sleeve does not display either the group name nor song title. Instead the sleeve’s spine simply reads ‘Fac Seventy Three’ and, on the front and back cover, the legend ‘Fac 73 Blue Monday and The Beach New Order’ is represented in code by a series of coloured blocks, the code is also employed on Confusion, another New Order release from this time period. The key enabling this to be deciphered was printed on the back sleeve of the album, Power, Corruption & Lies, Fact 75.
Fact 75 New Order Power, Corruption and Lies
