MEDIA MONDAY / MONDAY HAS A SOUNDTRACK

Listen for the one "Monday" lyric reference in this classic 40s tune brought back by Sinead O'Connor

The following is an example of the topics you'll find in no other general interest blog. Here's what we mean: 

A train leaves Chicago. 

A woman misses her ride to work. 

A man waits for his lover to come home. 

Another wishes the weekend would hurry up and end. 

All four songs have something to say about Monday, but they cannot agree on what the day means. Popular music has spent decades making it stand for fatigue, loneliness, romance, routine, escape and, occasionally, relief. 

Here are 25 songs PillartoPost.org's research team discovered with Monday in their lyrics.  This Monday hunt is arranged roughly by public recognition. Each entry names the writer and the first identified recording when it differs from the familiar one. 

-- “Monday, Monday” — The Mamas & the Papas (1966). Written by John Phillips; first recorded by the Mamas & the Papas. Their glorious harmonies make a lover’s departure sound almost pleasant. The singer knows better. Monday brought the news, and he no longer trusts it. 

-- “Lady Madonna” — The Beatles (1968). Primarily written by Paul McCartney, credited to Lennon–McCartney; first recorded by the Beatles. The song follows a mother trying to feed her children and pay the rent. Monday appears as one small moment in the relentless business of raising a family. Its title gave us no warning that it belonged on this list. 

-- “Manic Monday” — The Bangles (1986). Written by Prince, credited as Christopher; first recorded by Prince for a proposed Apollonia 6 version, but first released as a hit by the Bangles. A romantic dream gives way to a missed-train panic. Monday is the instant a private life collides with a work schedule. 

-- “Rainy Days and Mondays” — The Carpenters (1971). Words by Paul Williams, music by Roger Nichols; first released recording by the Carpenters. Karen Carpenter does not need a storm outside to convey the weather inside. Monday gives an otherwise hard-to-name sadness a place on the calendar. 

-- “Blue Monday” — New Order (1983). Written and first recorded by Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert of New Order. The phrase is in the title, though it is not sung. That title still shapes the way we hear the record’s mechanical pulse and cool emotional distance. 

-- “Friday I’m in Love” — The Cure (1992). Written and first recorded by the Cure’s Robert Smith, Simon Gallup, Porl Thompson, Boris Williams and Perry Bamonte. The song celebrates Friday, but first it acknowledges Monday’s blues. The weekend needs a working week to escape from. 

-- “FourFiveSeconds” — Rihanna, Kanye West and Paul McCartney (2015). Credited to a team of ten writers, including Rihanna, West and McCartney; first recorded by these performers. Its chorus repeatedly looks toward getting home by Monday morning. Here Monday is a deadline for finding one’s way back. 

-- “New Moon on Monday” — Duran Duran (1984). Written and first recorded by the band’s five members: Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, Roger Taylor and Andy Taylor. Leave it to Duran Duran to put a moon over Monday and turn the least glamorous day into an evening of mystery and dancing. 

-- “Blue Monday” — Fats Domino (1956). Originally written by Dave Bartholomew; later recordings commonly credit Bartholomew and Domino. First recorded by Smiley Lewis in 1953. Domino gave the song its enduring rock ’n’ roll voice. This “Blue Monday” is a separate composition from New Order’s, grounded in the familiar drag of the working week. 

-- “I Don’t Like Mondays” — The Boomtown Rats (1979). Written by Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers; first recorded by the Boomtown Rats. The title sounds like a joke one might make over breakfast. The song is anything but: it was prompted by the 1979 shooting at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego. It should never be mistaken for a routine protest against the alarm clock. 

 “City of New Orleans” — Steve Goodman and Arlo Guthrie. Written and first recorded by Goodman for his 1971 debut album; made a hit by Guthrie in 1972. Its Illinois Central train runs on a Monday morning. The day gives the journey its point of departure; the passing countryside, passengers and railroad workers give the song its soul. 

-- “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window” — The Beatles (1969). Primarily written by McCartney, credited to Lennon–McCartney; first recorded by the Beatles. In a refrain from Abbey Road, Sunday is on the telephone to Monday. The days pass news along as though they know one another. 

-- “Come Monday” — Jimmy Buffett (1974). Written and first recorded by Buffett. Monday is welcome for once. It promises the end of a separation and the return of the woman he loves. 

-- “Monday Morning” — Fleetwood Mac (1975). Written by Lindsey Buckingham; first released recording by Fleetwood Mac. The song opens the band’s 1975 album at a brisk pace. Its romantic uncertainty is as unsettled as the start of a new week. 

 --“Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)” — T-Bone Walker (1947). Written and first recorded by Walker. One of the great electric blues records begins its account of trouble on Monday, then discovers that Tuesday offers little improvement. 

-- “Black Coffee” — Sinéad O’Connor (1992). Music by Sonny Burke, words by Paul Francis Webster; Sarah Vaughan made an early recording in 1949. O’Connor’s version finds a sleepless singer tending her heartache with coffee. Monday enters as Sunday’s dreams fade. It may be the gentlest way into this collection, even with sadness in the cup. 

-- “Long Monday” — John Prine (2005). Written by Prine and Keith Sykes; first released recording by Prine. He remembers a weekend with his lover, then faces the hours after she leaves. The day grows long because he misses her. 

-- “Except for Monday” — Lorrie Morgan (1991). Written by Reed Nielsen; first recorded by Morgan. She tells an old flame she has recovered nicely from their breakup. There is, she admits, one exception—and Monday was never much good anyway. 

-- “Monday” — Imagine Dragons (2021). Credited to Dan Reynolds, Wayne Sermon, Ben McKee, Daniel Platzman and Andrew Tolman; first recorded by Imagine Dragons. It borrows Monday’s poor reputation to make an affectionate point: even an unpopular day can become dear to someone. 

-- “Monday Morning Church” — Alan Jackson, with Patty Loveless (2004). Written by Brent Baxter and Erin Enderlin; first released recording by Jackson, with Loveless on harmony. A church that was full on Sunday stands empty on Monday. The image becomes a measure of the singer’s grief. 

-- “Monday Morning” — Pulp (1995). Written and first recorded by Pulp members Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle, Nick Banks, Russell Senior and Steve Mackey. A new day appears to offer a fresh start. Then it reveals itself as another Monday morning, with the same life waiting. 

 --“Monday” — Wilco (1996). Written by Jeff Tweedy; first recorded by Wilco. Horns and guitars send this Monday charging down the road. Its restless narrator wants to get somewhere else. 

-- “Silent Weekend” — Bob Dylan. Written and first recorded by Dylan during the 1967 Basement Tapes sessions; officially released in 2014. His weekend has gone badly enough that he wishes Monday would arrive. Dylan turns the usual complaint neatly upside down. 

-- “Monday Monday Monday” — Tegan and Sara (2002). Written by Sara Quin; first recorded by Tegan and Sara. The day repeats in the title like a thought that refuses to leave. 

-- “Stone Cold Sober” — Rod Stewart (1975). Written by Stewart and Steve Cropper; first recorded by Stewart. Its lively run through the days of the week gives Monday a place in a calendar kept for late nights and good times. 

 The songs disagree because Monday itself is useful to a writer. It stands immediately after something—rest, pleasure, company, freedom—and immediately before the obligations of another week. 

That makes it a hinge for almost any story. 

 For the Bangles, it is a train to catch. 

For Prine, an empty stretch of time. 

For Goodman, a train already moving. 

For Buffett, a reunion. 

Dylan cannot wait for Monday; New Order can summon its mood without singing its name. Most days have to be explained. Monday walks into a song carrying its own baggage. The pleasure lies in hearing what each musician decides to do with it. 

SUNDAY REVIEW / CIVIL WAR EMBERS STILL GLOW

By Thomas Shess, Chairman, PillartoPost.org daily online magazine--Having read every major work on the American Civil War from Shelby Foote to Winston Churchill does not by any stretch make me an expert on the war between the states. However, as a writer and an editor I've made a career of offering my opinions. Some right, some wrong. 

But when it comes to the Civil War if I could choose only one author, who has researched and wriiten about that war, it would be Bruce Catton (1899 to 1978). And from his prodigious body of work I would choose A Stillness at Appomattox. 

 Published in 1953, it won both the Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1954. Awards help establish its reputation; the writing explains why it endures. A Stillness at Appomattox, the book is the concluding volume of Catton’s Army of the Potomac trilogy, following Mr. Lincoln’s Army and Glory Road. It stands comfortably on its own, taking readers through the Union army’s final year of fighting in Virginia, from winter quarters in 1864 to Robert E. Lee’s surrender in April 1865. 

Bruce Catton 1960s

Despite its title, this is a book about the long, punishing road to Appomattox, rather than simply the surrender itself. Let's discuss A Stillness..., Catton begins with a dance. At a Washington’s Birthday ball, officers and their guests briefly inhabit a world of polished boots, handsome uniforms, music and ceremony. The coming campaign hangs over the celebration. 

Many of these men will be dead before another winter arrives. That opening establishes the book’s governing tension: the distance between war as people imagine it and war as soldiers endure it. Then the music gives way to the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor and Petersburg. 

Grant, Meade, Sheridan and Lee occupy their necessary places, but Catton’s most compelling achievement is making the army itself a living presence. 

Drawing on soldiers’ letters, recollections and regimental histories, he gives ordinary men a place in a narrative too often reserved for commanders. 

 My opinion is that the book’s greatness lies in its control of emotional scale. 

Catton can explain the movement of an army, then bring the reader close enough to feel the exhaustion of the men moving it. His prose has rhythm and atmosphere, yet the story remains intelligible. You understand that campaigns depend on roads, orders and supplies; you also understand that somebody must keep walking in these warrior's boots. And what courage it took just to wake up to another day of war. 

Ulysses Simpson Grant emerges as the commander willing to sustain the pressure necessary to defeat Lee. But victory accumulates an appalling human invoice. The reader knows where the story is going, and that knowledge offers little comfort. Catton makes the final surrender feel earned through suffering. 

For me, the “stillness” of the title is the book’s most fitting presentation. After so much motion, noise and destruction, the absence of fighting becomes an event in itself. 

Relief arrives carrying grief. 

The achievement is literary as well as historical: Catton gives an ending whose emotional weight exceeds the familiar facts. There are limits. This is principally the story of a Union army in the eastern theater. Readers seeking an equally sustained account of slavery, emancipation, Southern civilians, Black Americans or the western campaigns will need other books. 

Catton understood slavery as the central cause of the war, but his emphasis on shared sacrifice and national reconciliation can soften the distinctions between what the opposing sides fought to preserve or destroy. 

Historian David Blight’s assessment recognizes both Catton’s extraordinary narrative power and that reconciliatory tendency. Those qualifications matter. They do not diminish my choice. 

For those new to Catton's work, A Stillness at Appomattox remains an exceptional introduction to Catton because it concentrates his finest gifts: clarity, sympathy, dramatic movement and an awareness of what victory costs. 

Bruce Catton, born October 9, 1899, in Petoskey, Michigan, grew up in Benzonia listening to Civil War veterans. He attended Oberlin College, served in the Navy during World War I and built a newspaper career before becoming a celebrated historian. 

In 1954 he became the founding editor of American Heritage. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and died August 28, 1978. 

Stepping back, where does he stand among the great Civil War authors? Easily in the first rank of narrative historians. That is my assessment, supported by the esteem of historians who followed him. Blight credits Catton with drawing him into Civil War history; Stephen W. Sears praised his transformation of ordinary soldiers into fully realized historical participants. I would place Catton alongside Shelby Foote for storytelling distinction, while choosing James M. McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom for a broader single-volume understanding of the conflict. Catton’s particular territory is the lived experience of the Union soldier. 

Few writers have made those men feel so close, or made the passage from military glory to human loss so moving. Read A Stillness at Appomattox for the history—and for a demonstration of how beautifully history can be written. 

And, please know my esteem for A Stillness...does not diminish whatsoever, Shelby Foote's epic coverage of the Civil War or Doris Kearns Goodwin passion for the era. 

And as for all the books on Gettysburg, Jeffrey Hall's The Stand is a beacon in detail, but Bruce Catton's Gettysburg: The Final Fury delivers the emotional impact delivered in one of the most pithy and engrossing works. Via Bruce Catton, the embers still glow all these years later. 

Reading Catton is simply remarkable adventure in  itself.