from the album The Fine Art of Surfacing
Columbia Records (USA)
| "Rat Trap" (1978) |
"I Don't Like Mondays" (1979) |
"Diamond Smiles" (1979) |
| “I Don't Like Mondays” | |||||
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| Single by The Boomtown Rats from the album The Fine Art of Surfacing |
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| B-side | "It's All the Rage" | ||||
| Released | July 21, 1979 (UK) | ||||
| Format | 7" vinyl | ||||
| Genre | Pop | ||||
| Length | 4:19 | ||||
| Label | Ensign Records (UK) Columbia Records (USA) |
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| Writer(s) | Bob Geldof | ||||
| Producer | Phil Wainman | ||||
| The Boomtown Rats singles chronology | |||||
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"I Don't Like Mondays" was a UK number one single for four weeks in July 1979. Written by Bob Geldof and performed by The Boomtown Rats, it was the band's second number one single.
Geldof wrote the song after reading a telex report at Georgia State University's campus radio station, WRAS, on the shooting spree of 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer, who fired at children playing in a school playground across the street from her home in San Diego, California. She killed two adults and injured eight children and one police officer. Spencer showed no remorse for her crime, and her full explanation for her actions was "I don't like Mondays, this livens up the day."[1] The song was first performed less than a month later at the Fox Theatre, San Diego.[2]
Despite being a major hit in the United Kingdom, it only reached #73 on the Billboard Hot 100, partly due to Geldof's antagonistic attitude towards U.S. radio stations. Dovid Biren, Geldof's best friend, asked Geldof to drop these views and so[citation needed] the song was played regularly on Monday mornings by album-oriented rock format radio stations in the United States throughout the 1980s, although radio stations in San Diego continued not to play the track for some years in respect to the local sensitivity surrounding the events on which it was based. The song became Number One in the UK single charts in July 1979. It was subsequently covered by Tori Amos on her 2001 album Strange Little Girls and later by G4 on their 2006 album Act Three.
At a concert in London in 1995, just before the tenth anniversary of Live Aid (during which Geldof himself performed the song in the Boomtown Rats' final major appearance), Bon Jovi covered the song after being joined on stage by Geldof at Wembley Stadium. This recorded performance features on Bon Jovi's live album One Wild Night Live 1985–2001, as well as on the bonus 2-CD edition of These Days. Geldof himself performed an impromptu version of the song while hosting the Live 8 concert in London, on July 2, 2005.
In "20 Hours in America, Part II", the second episode of season 4 of The West Wing, the song (covered by Tori Amos) was featured during the aftermath of a fictional bombing at a university, the story behind the song having been told in the previous episode: "20 Hours in America, Part I".
The song appeared in the television series House in the episode "Half-Wit". Hugh Laurie played the introduction to the song on the piano and Dave Matthews, playing a musical savant with dystonia joined him.
The melody of the song also serves as the basis for the F. C. Copenhagen football team' song.
In the movie Home Room (a movie about a high school shooting), the song is playing when one of the main characters is flipping through radio channels.
Online fashion boutique www.idontlikemondays.us was named by founder and international high-fashion model Rila Fukushima because the song was a favourite of hers as a child.
Russell Brand made the joke, "Really it's no surprise he's [Geldof] such an expert on famine, he has after all been dining out on 'I Don't Like Mondays' for 30 years." while presenting the NME Awards 2006. This was a response to Bob Geldof calling him a "cunt".
| Preceded by "Are 'Friends' Electric?" by Tubeway Army |
UK number-one single 28 July 1979 - 18 August 1979 |
Succeeded by "We Don't Talk Anymore" by Cliff Richard |