I’m not sure there’s a tighter more thrilling seven-minute pop song in music history than New Order’s Blue Monday.
Featuring a blistering bass line and electronic drums, not to mention drone-strike guitar licks and otherworldly synthesizer hauntings, the song goes its first two minutes before any lyrics are heard. At the 5:30 mark there’s an epic sparse breakdown to just beats followed by what sounds like Dark Ages monks chanting and then it’s everything but the kitchen sink for the last two minutes. I defy you to find me another tune that sounds like Stranger Things on acid running into the Oh Yeah song from Ferris Bueller in a dirty alley and backhand slapping Oh Yeah across the face like, get out of here with that weak a** nonsense. Also, it’s 7:26 long and plays like it’s three minutes at most.
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New Order is one of the most underrated ‘80′s bands.
I can’t think of a single other group that alternated between furious dance club synth pop and navel-gazing, “oh whoa is me” alt-rock than New Order. What was the mission here? If they were on the marquee at your local cinema it would be like watching a double feature of Flashdance and Mermaids. Staying Alive and Terms of Endearment. Purple Rain and Say Anything.
It’s been a while since I listened to my New Order greatest hits cassette (yes I own that) but I want to say whoever compiled that album knew exactly what they were doing because, unless I am misremembering because I am now 52, the tracks alternate between let’s get busy on the dance floor like The Terminator is coming for us but we don’t know it yet and I love my person so much but she left me and so I wrote this song. Looking at you, Taylor Swift.
Anyway.
In 1988 I arrived on the MSU campus and became instant friends with the guy across the dorm hallway, Jim. He had speakers. Serious speakers. And about that time New Order released an album called Technique that contained a song firmly in its synth pop category (very similar to Blue Monday) called Fine Time. It starts with cymbal tapping followed by an electronic bass line followed by…
Jim’s speaker woofers completely frying on the ensuing 808 bass drum kicks that launch the song into supersonic orbit
How we laughed and laughed that he thought he had enough wattage to turn it up to 11. Well, Paul and Drew and I laughed. Jim was not happy. At least that’s how I remember it because Jim is going to read this.
In later years New Order would sort of re-emerge in the 2000′s with a comeback CD that in all honesty was what they always did. Mix absolute dance floor jams with How I Met Your Mother Because We Went To A Morrisey Concert-type nonsense which nevertheless goes down like a buttery can of Pellegrino. And that, friends, is a sentence I never thought I would write.
Jokes aside, that 2005 CD, Waiting For The Sirens’ Call, was as good as anything they ever released. Jetstream, the Sirens’ title track, and a tune called Morning Night and Day are standouts but all of the album is top notch New Order.
Before I leave this entry, I need to give a special mention to a group that absolutely no one remembers but was very important to me as a teen of the Eighties. The Art of Noise. Weird and experimental but in certain instances oddly danceable I don’t think I listened to anything more on my Walkman except for Blues Brothers, Beastie Boys, Run DMC and the James Bond soundtracks. And thus concludes another sentence I never thought I would write.
Listen to New Order. You won’t be sorry you did.
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