蓝色星期一 (1983)

"Blue Monday" is a song by the English rock band New Order. It was released as a 12-inch single on 7 March 1983 through Factory Records. It appears on certain cassette and CD versions of New Order's second studio album, Power, Corruption & Lies (1983). The track was written and produced by Gillian Gilbert, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and Bernard Sumner.

"Blue Monday" is a Eurodisco, synth-pop and alternative dance song that drew inspirations from many works of other artists. The 12-inch single was backed with a primarily instrumental version of the song entitled "The Beach" on the B-side. The single's unique packaging was designed by Peter Saville and Brett Wickens. It features a die-cut sleeve designed to resemble a 5+1⁄4-inch floppy disk. The cover features no words, but instead has code, invented by Saville, in the form of coloured blocks that contains the artist, song and label information.

The original single made the top 10 in many countries. It reached number nine on the UK singles chart and spent 38 weeks in the top 75. It spent 186 weeks on the UK Independent Singles Chart, effectively selling for four years until the release of the Substance 1987 compilation on which it featured. The UK Indie Chart run was second only to "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division, which clocked 195 weeks (their runs overlapped). In New Zealand, it peaked at number 2 and spent 74 weeks (spread across three calendar years) in the top 50. The 1988 remix reached number 3 on the British chart and number 4 on the Australian chart, and it topped the dance chart in the United States.

"Blue Monday" is the best-selling 12-inch single in history. In the United Kingdom, it has sold 1.16 million copies in all formats, including the 1988 and 1995 re-releases. Sales of the original 1983 12-inch release account for the bulk of the total, at over 700,000 copies. It was remixed by the band twice, in 1988 and 1995. The 1988 remix reached number 1 in New Zealand and the top 10 in other countries. The song has been covered by bands including Orgy, Flunk, 808 State, the Enemy and Health. In 2021 and 2022, Rolling Stone included it at numbers 235 and 18 in its lists of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" and "200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time".

Background and writing

New Order was formed in 1980 by the former members of Joy Division, which split after the death of their singer, Ian Curtis. They later recruited Gillian Gilbert as keyboardist and second guitarist, and began to explore new musical technology such as synthesisers.

New Order wrote "Blue Monday" in their rehearsal room in Cheetham Hill, Manchester.

The synth bassline was performed on a Moog Source and sequenced on a sequencer built by the singer, Bernard Sumner. An Oberheim DMX drum machine was used for rhythm. The kick drum was recorded playing through a studio monitor to capture the room's natural reverb. New Order bought an early sampler, the Emulator 1, and sampled choir sounds from Kraftwerk's "Uranium". The band learned how to use the sampler by recording their flatulence and sneezes.