The Making of Blue Monday
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The Making of Blue Monday - and why it links to one day in January
Few records capture a feeling as precisely as Blue Monday by New Order.
Released in March 1983, the track became a landmark moment for electronic and alternative music. Blue Monday blends cold machine rhythms with raw emotion in a way that felt entirely new at the time. Built around drum machines, sequencers and a minimalist structure, Blue Monday was never designed to be a traditional single. In fact, it began life as a club experiment, something New Order could play while resetting between live sets.
The result was hypnotic, detached and strangely emotional. Bernard Sumner’s restrained vocal, paired with that relentless electronic pulse, created a sound that sat somewhere between melancholy and momentum - a mood that would come to define the band and influence generations that followed.
Then came the sleeve.
Designed by Peter Saville, the 12” featured a die-cut design inspired by a 5¼-inch floppy disk. It was iconic and disastrously expensive. Factory Records famously lost money on every copy sold, as the cost of producing the sleeve outweighed the profit from the record itself. Yet despite this, Blue Monday went on to become the biggest-selling 12-inch single of all time.
A commercial paradox. A cultural phenomenon.
Over the years, the song has become inseparable from Blue Monday the third Monday in January. The day is often labelled the most difficult day of the year. Whether through name, tone or timing, the connection feels inevitable. The track’s emotional coolness, its sense of isolation and its driving forward motion mirror the mood of that mid-January slump perfectly.
But Blue Monday doesn’t dwell in despair. Like the song itself, the day passes. The beat keeps going. There’s movement, energy and release buried beneath the surface.
More than forty years on, Blue Monday still sounds futuristic, still feels relevant, and still finds new meaning every January - especially on that one Monday when the mood hits a little harder than usual.
Some records don’t just soundtrack moments.
They define them.