Forty years of New Order’s Blue Monday: who inspired it and who it inspired

It’s probably overstating the case to say that the release of Blue Monday transformed New Order’s career, but it certainly changed it. It put them in the Top 10 and on Top of the Pops for the first time. It spent 38 weeks in the Top 75, became the biggest-selling 12-inch and altered public perceptions of New Order: previously The Band That Used to Be Joy Division, the province of John Peel listeners, they now reached an audience that had never heard of Ian Curtis.