Breaking Down the New Order Song ‘Blue Monday’

Los Angeles composer/sound engineer Jon Mattox musically broke down the seminal New Order song “Blue Monday”, showcasing each track individually and how they all came together to create a masterpiece of a song. Mattox also noted that a specific percussive synth track that comes in right after the initial vocals was out of time with the overall sequence, but it became a happy accident when combined with the bass track.

It’s off by a 16th note, and it’s an accident because in those days, you had to program the notes manually. This was before MIDI and on its own, it sounds fine, but if you add the click track, you can hear how it’s off. So it turns out, it was a happy accident. They didn’t have to reprogram anything. …when the bass synth is put in, it just magically works.

The Song in Its Original Form