Those Who Came Before Me

Legend has it that one of the best singles ever was written because an encore averse Manchester band were casting around for a drum machine driven song that would kind of ‘play itself’ and avoid them having to come back on stage, so they could piss off early.

The whip smart drum sound absolutely booms on my copy, ushering in 7:32 of pure bliss, ushering in a definitive sound of the 1980s, ushering in whole new genres and, with apologies to the ol’ Edgar Allan, ushering in a fall of house.

New Order Blue Monday. A song without any chorus at all becoming the best selling 12″ ever. A record so good that the band refused to shorten or release it on anything but 12″ in a ground-breaking/loss making package*.

Tell me, how do I feel?

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Blue Monday** was released in March ’83 a couple of months before New Order’s sophomore LP and serves as a definitive kicking over the lingering traces of Joy Division. I once knew the sort of people who were still angry about this a decade later, which still amuses me in my faintly superior way. This was new, this was bright, this was about dancing.

Those who came before me
Lived through their vocations
From the past until completion
They'll turn away no more

Except it is much weirder than that. You dig beneath the gleaming Kraftwerkian snap and crack of the rhythm track, the pulsing sequencers and things get strange. The lyrics are reproachful, numb, needy in a way very few songs are, tossed out almost without inflection or emphasis. Whether the dependence Blue Monday is drenched in is emotional or pharmacological is unspoken.

There is a hollowness at the centre of this precision tooled object that makes this song the perfect soundtrack for the decade whose dancefloors it dominated^, mirrors, powder, red eyes and chrome all the way. There is a reason it always soundtracks anything to do fashion in the 80’s, just stick ‘The Model’ on afterwards for maximum affect.

And still, I find it so hard
To say what I need to say
But I'm quite sure that you'll tell me
Just how I should feel today

The B-side of Blue Monday is a marginally rejigged instrumental version called ‘The Beach’, which seems to be missing the bulk of Hooky’s bass part and has additional 80’s dance effects added, it is bloody great too.

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Peter Saville’s cover package for Blue Monday was legendarily uncompromising in nature. He designed a die-cut sleeve without the band name or song title^* that was fashioned to look like a floppy disc. Saville was so late in fulfilling his brief that he delivered the finished art direct to the printer unseen by both band or record label.

The art was so elaborate to print that apparently the band and label lost 5p on every single unit sold. Not an issue when you don’t expect to sell many copies, when it becomes the best selling 12″ ever … that’s Factory Records economics for you.

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My copy of Blue Monday is sadly not an old musty survivor from way back when and worth a bunch, it is a 2020 reissue. It sounds absolutely superb, a really well-cut reissue that absolutely booms from the speakers.

Tell me, how does it feel
When your heart grows cold? 

1322 Down (to the beach).

*they naffed it up in ’88 remixing it, releasing it on different formats, allowing it to be anthologised etc. ‘Don’t count on New Order, they always let you down’, a mate who is a big fan of them told me last week.

**which by the way, astonishing tune as it is, is only my 2nd favourite song called ‘Blue Monday’; looking at you Fats.

^I had a whole routine worked out for it which used to get deployed with occasionally positive results at various student bops in Leeds.

^*it is there in a colour-pattern code that there was a key for on their next LP. Handy.