Pantheon Songs

On May 18, 1980 Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, committed suicide. Exactly two months later Closer, the band’s final studio album, was released. Within a few months after the release of Closer the remaining members of the band—Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, and Bernard Sumner—formed New Order and shortly thereafter they brought in Gillian Gilbert to round out the original lineup. And by the spring of 1983 (almost three years to the day after Curtis’s suicide) New Order released the single “Blue Monday.” “Blue Monday,” simply put, is arguably one of the greatest and most important songs of the ’80′s. Its greatness lies in its musical polish (oh, how the beautiful electronic melody coexists with the spidery guitar!), and its importance is marked by its success as an electronic crossover hit in both the US and the UK. More importantly, though, “Blue Monday” is to me one of the best songs of the ’80′s because it artfully avoids all of the pratfalls and clichés associated with ’80′s music (even though its sound is unmistakably tied to the ’80′s).

Allow me to elaborate.

If I were to say to you Think of the ’80′s and tell me the first five pop culture-related things that come to mind you would most likely say a couple/few of the things from this generalized pool of clichés from that decade:

cocaine, Reagan, neon colors, Gary Coleman, high hair, hair metal, Wall Street, Madonna, Don Johnson, Thriller, archaic Personal Computers, Atari, E.T., the word “rad,” L.A. Gear, Michael Jackson’s glove, MTV, Nintendo, the 1984 Apple commercial, Studio 54-type dance clubs, headbands, Miami, “Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!” Trapper Keepers, Spicoli, John Hughes, iced jeans, Judd Nelson, teenage girls whose singing careers were helped by performing at suburban malls, Swatch, Eddie Murphy, Perfect Strangers, “I’ll be back,” Duran Duran, Tony Montana, torn jeans, the phrase “gag me with a spoon”

And there are probably a hundred more that I am leaving out but you get the picture. The main point, though, is to illustrate that we are all guilty of compartmentalizing decades and eras into a handful of landmarks from the world of marketing, music, television, fashion, and cinema. Think of 1969 and most of us will inevitably think of dancing hippies on a piece of farmland while a Joe Cocker or Canned Heat song plays in the background of the montage that we are imagining. None of this is to say that it is wrong to do this or that it’s too simplistic to fall into those traps, as these things help break things down and remember things from a complex and diverse era, much like metaphors help explain complex and diverse theories, facts, and practices.

And so it is probably not far-fetched to think that many people, when they are asked to think of ’80′s music as a whole, will think of a certain kind of music—a certain kind of synthpop sound with a Flock of Seagulls or Duran Duran or Madonna face to it. But when I think of the ’80′s in terms of the entire decade of music I think of “Blue Monday.” I think of “Blue Monday” because it simply exists as an entity outside of itself; it has no real linear cliché attached to it. When I hear this song I have no association of what the members of New Order looked like or dressed like, whereas with Madonna or Michael Jackson I have very definite images that crop us subconsciously when I hear music from their ’80′s catalog.

Think about it: unless you grew up in England and are around 40-45 years, or you are a huge New Order fan, would you even be able to tell Stephen Morris apart from Martin Gore, one of the founding members of Depeche Mode? The primary reason why I chose to use the picture of the band that I did above is because of its inherent anonymity. As a 33 year old American male I grew up knowing who New Order was and hearing their music here and there on the radio, but I had no idea what they actually looked like—and I suspect that this is something that many many people my age have in common when it comes to this band. And, yet, “Blue Monday” is one of the best masterpieces from the ’80′s in spite of its anonymity. It is nearly seven and a half minutes of polished electronic bliss with singsong vocals and a wonderful pacing and perfectly placed gunfire and a nearly three minute outro. It encompasses so much about the ’80′s without all of those pesky direct clichés associated with it. If anything, the main image that this song likely conjures is probably a generic scene at a club.

To be sure, there is nothing wrong with music that directly attaches itself to the sign of the times—even if the music itself is kind of ultimately secondary (again, think: “Thriller” or “Material Girl” or anything from Purple Rain). But there is something to be said of art that is simply timeless, even if it is sometimes forgotten.

One of the main goals of this site is to provide a new perspective of looking at the history of modern music, one song at a time. When this site reaches its ultimate endpoint I hope that all of the songs that are profiled, when taken together as a whole, provide a detailed and (hopefully) uniquely panoramic view of modern music. And when it comes to ’80′s pop, to me, any discussion regarding it simply has to include “Blue Monday.” It is one of the best electronic songs ever made; it is one of the best dance songs ever made; it is one of the best pop songs ever made. It cuts through all of the minutiae and all of the revisionist pop culture forces of the ’80′s. It transcends torn jeans and Trapper Keepers and silver right-handed gloves.

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