Great article on NO!

Yes I deliberately left out the details in the title, because even though it's about that track, it's a really well put together article. I'll be surprised if there's a better one (cue: arguments).

Click the tweet.

[TWITTER]1590106531236052993[/TWITTER]

Great article, D! Thanks for the heads up.

Good to see so much detail about things like Martin Usher, the various influences (Summer, Sylvester etc.) and the machines used.

I especially enjoyed the following quote:

As Gilbert told The Guardian, Sumner and Morris mastered the Emulator by “spending hours recording farts.”

I can imagine that happening.

Also, the 'happy accident' of Gillian leaving out a note whilst doing the complicated job of programming the sequencer. Proof (as if we needed it) that Gillian more than pulled her weight in the band.

The article reminds me of that excellent 30 minute documentary - 'Hitlåtens Historia - Blue Monday', which was shown on Swedish TV back in 2013. Definitely worth checking out. Lots and lots of details about the song and interviews with the band. I don't know if it was ever shown in other countries. Have just tried to find it online, with no success. If anyone does want to see it, just PM me.

Thanks for the link. I saw it on Twitter but hadn't clicked for the reasons you mentioned. The only thing not really covered was that they hadn't intended it to be a new "song". It originally was intended to be an automatic encore that they could kick off before leaving the stage. I suspect it was also was a way of learning their way around what some newly arrived gear was capable of. Of course once it began to take shape, they realized it was too good to just be intro or outro stage music.

What articles often leave out are the songs that "inspired" the track. This one covered them well with Dirty Talk and Our Love being the most obvious. While those two were cutting edge for their time, they don't really have the sound of the future that Blue Monday possesses. I've always wondered what it must have been like for those lucky Australians to hear it live, several months before release.

Andy wrote: The only thing not really covered was that they hadn't intended it to be a new "song". It originally was intended to be an automatic encore that they could kick off before leaving the stage.

Well...

New Order continues to perform “Blue Monday” live, and it was a constant on the band’s 2022 Unity Tour with Pet Shop Boys. It wasn’t used as the show closer, which is curious, as Hook insists in his memoir that the whole point of writing the sequencer-driven song was to make something New Order could play for an encore without having to actually return to the stage. The machinery would do all the work while the musicians relaxed in their dressing room. In his memoir, Sumner calls that plan a “side effect” of the song’s creation—not the impetus.