Happy 40th Birthday! New Order's Blue Monday first arrived in the charts on this weekend in March 1983:
- It reached #12 on 23rd April.
- Having not left the Top 100 all year, it re-entered the Top 40 on 17th September.
- It hit its highest chart position - #9 - on 15th October.
- However, it was actually a remix by none other than Quincy Jones that gave the song its highest chart place (#3) five years later, in May 1988.
An all-time classic, way back in 2009 I decided to post a "recipe" of the "ingredients" that contributed to its composition, based upon a Sky Arts documentary at the time - and lo and behold, Alex Petridis in The Guardian has done the same. Some of the ingredients he used were the same as mine, but there are some interesting differences...
Both he and I acknowledged that this slice of Italo disco brilliance (which Bernard Sumner has always cited as one of his favourite songs) was a key element:
It's undeniable that Giorgio Moroder's groundbreaking collaboration with Donna Summer was a big influence on the band, but I chose the obvious number...
...whereas Mr Petridis suggested this album track:
It's undeniable that this one had to be in the mix, and our lists coincided again:
Although, inevitably, a soupçon of Kraftwerk had to be there, the "flavours" diverged - as Alex chose this:
Whereas I specified one that was a tad more familiar:
There was one more piece in the Guardian article that came as a bit of a "left-fielder", however. Apparently Peter Hook claimed the sparse riffs of Blue Monday were inspired by the twanging lead guitar in Ennio Morricone's score for For a Few Dollars More!
Whatever the ingredients, the resulting "dish" is delicious, indeed:
STOP PRESS:
The official lyric video...