"I Don't Like Mondays"
Single by The Boomtown Rats
from the album The Fine Art of Surfacing
B-side	"It's All the Rage"
Released	21 July 1979 (UK)
Format	7" vinyl
Genre	Pop
Length	4:19
Label	Ensign Records (UK) Columbia Records (USA)
Writer(s)	Bob Geldof
Producer	Phil Wainman
The Boomtown Rats singles chronology
"Rat Trap" (1978) "I Don't Like Mondays" (1979) "Diamond Smiles" (1979)

"I Don't Like Mondays" was a UK number one single for four weeks during July and August 1979. Written by Bob Geldof and performed by The Boomtown Rats. It was the band's second number one single.

[edit] History

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. Geldof explained how he wrote the song:

"I was doing a radio interview in Atlanta with Fingers and there was a telex machine beside me. I read it as it came out. Not liking Mondays as a reason for doing somebody in, is a bit strange. I was thinking about it on the way back to the hotel, and I just said 'Silicone chip inside her head had switched to overload'. I wrote that down. And the journalists interviewing her said, 'Tell me why?' It was such a senseless act. It was the perfect senseless act and this was the perfect senseless reason for doing it. So perhaps I wrote the perfect senseless song to illustrate it. It wasn't an attempt to exploit tragedy."^[2]

Geldof had originally intended the song as a b-side, but changed his mind after the song went down well with audiences on the Rats' US tour.^[2] Spencer's family tried unsuccessfully to prevent the single from being released in the United States.^[2] Despite being a major hit in the United Kingdom, it only reached #73 on the US 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 still refrained from playing the track for some years in respect to local sensitivities about the shooting. The song became Number One in the UK single charts in July 1979. In the UK it won the prestigious Best Pop Song and Outstanding British Lyric categories at the Ivor Novello Awards. ^[3] 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.

[edit] In popular culture

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". Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) played the elegant piano introduction to the song for a patient (Dave Matthews), a musical savant with dystonia, who then repeated it perfectly (with House adding the distinctive hand claps between the last two phrases).

The melody of the song also serves as the basis for the F. C. Copenhagen football team's song.

In Home Room (a film about a high school shooting), the song is playing when one of the main characters is flipping through radio channels.

VH1 rated the song at #65 on its list of the top 100 one hit wonders of the '80s, despite the song being released in 1979.

Online fashion boutique I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS was named by founder and international high-fashion model Rila Fukushima because the song was a favourite of hers as a child.

In 2006 while presenting the NME Awards, 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 thirty years". This was a response to Geldof calling him a "cunt".^[4]

[edit] References

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
Preceded by "Do You Want Your Oul Lobby Washed Down" by Brendan Shine	Irish Singles Chart number-one single 4 August 1979 - 25 August 1979	Succeeded by "Viva Il Papa" by Catriona Walsh
Preceded by "Born to Be Alive" by Patrick Hernandez	Australian Kent Music Report number-one single 12 November 1979 - 19 November 1979	Succeeded by "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles