Crucial Track for 24 May 2025

"Blue Monday (2023 Digital Master)" by New Order

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Describe your favorite summer as a kid using a single song.

I don't have a terrific memory when it comes to my childhood, but I do remember one particular song and one particular summer.

It was the summer right after the first year of high school. Moments before I left to spend the summer with my dad, I had started seeing a boy who would become my on-again, off-again high school boyfriend. He and I had bonded over music, gradually, each of us so shy and introverted and circling each other warily.

Long-distance phone calls were different back then. (They cost money!) So we didn't talk on the phone very much, and when we did, it was incredibly awkward. I can so deeply recall the pained feeling of missing someone I barely knew, a rabid rodent gnawing the inside of my ribcage.

One day, a FedEx truck rumbled up to my dad's townhome. This was a massive deal in those days; witnessing a FedEx truck doing anything outside of a movie about high-powered New York execs was like spotting a unicorn, and we were in rural Pennsylvania, where Nothing Ever Happened. The driver hand-delivered a cardboard envelope to our door. My dad was bemused; I was elated. I knew exactly what was inside: a very long letter, painstakingly hand-printed on looseleaf paper, and a double CD of New Order's Substance 1987.

"Bizarre Love Triangle" might have been the bigger hit, but "Blue Monday" was the one I couldn't stop playing on my Discman, crumpling the love letter to my stomach, attempting to smother the butterflies inside.