Monday the 19th of January is sometimes known as Blue Monday. Instead of succumbing to the January blues, this day had us turning to the day's namesake - New Order's 1983 single, Blue Monday, from the album Power, Corruption and Lies, released in the same year.
This blog post isn't really about the music on the release, however. Instead, we're looking at a secret code that appears on the sleeve...
Where is the code?
To start, we need to take a look at the side of the 12" single of Blue Monday. The cover was die-cut to look like a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk, and both the front and the back have a string of coloured shapes at their outer edge.
Each colour square represents a different letter, and to decode the message, we need help from New Order's second album - Power, Corruption and Lies. On the back of the sleeve is a colour wheel, pictured below.
The key was designed by Peter Saville, who designed many records for Factory Records - the record label who signed New Order. The code on this sleeve represented the band's name, the title of the album, and the catalogue number, so that there was no text on the album cover. However for later reissues, the catalogue number was added.
How do you decode the cover, and what does it say?
Each colour on the back of the album sleeve represents a different letter of the alphabet. Starting at 12 o'clock with A, and going clockwise with B, C etc. Each colour also represents a number, starting from 1, which can be decoded in the same way.
Check out our Instagram for a visual on how to decode this!
As New Order wanted to keep the sleeve of the 12" single with no text on it, what you decode is the catalogue number, title and artist of the record.
Our copy reads 'FAC73 Blue Monday and The Beach New Order'
However, due to manufacturing errors, not all of the codes read the same. Some have extra letters, or os where rs should be. What does your copy say? This is also the same for the album, Power, Corruption and Lies, which has spelling errors in later reissues.
