New Order, timeless style: Blue Monday recorded with instruments from the 1930s

Blue Monday by New Order is the biggest selling 12” single of all time.

“I don’t really see it as a song. I see it as a machine designed to make people dance.”

New Order’s Bernard Sumner

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 is one of the longest songs ever to grace the UK singles chart, peaking at No. 9 in 1983 and at No. 3 when it was 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.