Monday Blues, On A Tuesday

New Order’s first four singles accomplish as much as most bands do in their entire careers, which is to find their sound and make it work. This was where the energetic hustle and excited riffing of certain Joy Division songs turned over into the "happier" major-key gut-stirring stuff that makes New Order anthems so lovable: Vocals have shifted from dour, gruff Ian to starry-eyed Bernard, Gillian has come in on keyboards, and by the time you get to the 7" version of "Temptation" the whole thing has coalesced into the cruising, casual, hook-filled style that would sustain the band's pretty-great albums for years to come. (And not just them: the guitar and bass sounds here are the basic DNA at the core of a massive chunk of indie.) The not-very-good single from this period, in fact, is "Everything's Gone Green", in which the band discovers a) Computer-based sequencers, and b) Almost the exact vocal line from "Blue Monday", and stumble their way through an awkward dry run; for a second, they were actually doing better not trying anything new.

Then they embraced dance music: the drum machines and sequencers, the extended 12" mixes, the single as something totally distinct from the album version, the iconic "Blue Monday". Given how successful all that stuff turned out (you probably hear "Blue Monday" more than "Dancing Queen") it's tempting to think this is the part where New Order start aiming their singles the Pop Way. The truth, though, is possibly the other way around. Geeking out on computer music, Italian disco, and Kraftwerk, collaborating with NYC dance producers like Arthur Baker: This stuff was New Order abandoning a working formula to follow their own muse, one exploratory enough that it was probably more likely to lead them to the punks-gone-dance obscurity of A Certain Ratio than the dance-pop stardom of Duran Duran. And yet, and yet: "Blue Monday" became the best-selling British 12" single.

Ripped by DJ PaulT @ Burning the Ground to 24bit FLAC

New Order; Blue Monday 12”

A.     Blue Monday

B.     The Beach