Blue Monday by New Order is the biggest selling 12” single of all time. It was created using a hand-built Powertron Sequencer driving a Moog Source synthesiser, and an Oberheim DMX drum machine.
Clocking in at seven and half minutes, it’s one of the longest songs ever to grace the UK singles chart, where it peaked at No9 in 1983, and at No3 when re-released in 1988. The original artwork, designed for Factory Records by Peter Saville, was famously so expensive to produce that the label lost money on every sale.
Bernard Sumner has said of Blue Monday: “I don’t really see it as a song. I see it as a machine designed to make people dance.”
New Order performing Blue Monday live on Top of the Pops in 1983
Disorder & Other Unknown Pleasures 