Happy Mondays ‘The Factory Singles’ Out Next Month

London Records are to mark 40 years of the Happy Mondays with a series of special releases, beginning with the new compilation The Factory Singles, available December 5, 2025 on double CD, double LP & cassette – pre-order here.

The Factory Singles compiles all Happy Mondays singles on the legendary Manchester label Factory Records, including Step On, Kinky Afro, Hallelujah and 24-Hour Party People. This definitive collection captures the band’s ground-breaking output from 1985 –1992, celebrating their pivotal role in shaping UK music culture. The Factory Singles will be available across multiple formats — including 2LP, 2CD, and a 1LP Blood Records Exclusive. The artwork has been conceived by the band’s iconic original designers from Central Station – and features distinctive variations across each format. Vivid, enduring ink stains serve as a striking visual metaphor for the lasting imprint the band left on Manchester and the British music scene.

Complementing the physical editions, a brand-new digital remix drop series will be unveiled from renowned producers Daniel Avery, Paul Oakenfold, Anna Prior, Mella Dee, and Shadow Child – bridging the Mondays’ legacy with today’s electronic innovators. Original Mondays collaborator Paul Oakenfold has revisited Step On after 35 years with a stunning new remix.

Of the remix, Oakenfold comments: ‘When I listen back to Step On now, it still sounds dangerous. It still sounds alive. And it still gets dancefloors moving. That’s the test of real music—not how it charts, but how it feels decades later. To be able to come back to it 35 years on and give it a fresh spin is special. It’s not just nostalgia – it’s about showing that the spirit of the track still connects, still has that edge, and can still light up a dancefloor today.’

Oakenfold, who produced Pills ’N’ Thrills and Bellyaches as well as providing many of the Mondays most successful remixes, also contributes liner notes, in which he writes: ‘When I think back to working with the Happy Mondays, I don’t think about chaos first. I don’t think about the drugs or the headlines. I think about the music. Because above all else – above the madness and the mayhem – was a sound that was utterly new. A sound that broke the rules. A sound that made your feet move before your brain caught up. A sound we helped shape, together.’

Since emerging from the deviant streets of early 80s post-punk Salford, Happy Mondays have been the UK’s craftiest doyens of accidental, spasmodic genius. The nation’s premier rock ‘n’ roll pirates, who swerved the boredom, dodged reality and made something out of nothing. Something different from everything that had gone before. Both cackling lunatic delinquents and savvy musical scholars, they comprised Shaun Ryder and his dastardly wit, his brother Paul’s undulating basslines, drummer Gaz Whelan’s enigmatic beats, guitarist Mark Day’s intoxicating guitar lines and Paul Davis’ transcendental keyboards. And Bez, of course, with his onstage maracas and pterodactyl-winged freaky dancin’, who was (and remains) their one-off talismanic soul.

Signed by the late, great Anthony ‘Tony’ Wilson to the still-influential Factory Records in 1985, Happy Mondays released four albums on the label – Squirrel And G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out) (1987), Bummed (1988), Pills ‘N’ Thrills And Bellyaches (1990) and …Yes Please! (1992).

The collapse of Factory in November 1992 – in part caused by the £400,000 bill for recording …Yes Please! in Barbados – marked the beginning of the end of the first incarnation Happy Mondays, who split in 1993, with Shaun going on to form the hugely successful Black Grape with Kermit of Ruthless Rap Assassins.

Happy Mondays have successfully reformed several times, and last year undertook their first headline tour since the passing of founder member Paul Ryder in 2022. In 2026, Happy Mondays will celebrate the 35th anniversary of Pills ‘N’ Thrills And Bellyaches with an extensive UK Tour.

Track Listing

CD1

1. Delightful
2. Freaky Dancin’
3. Tart Tart
4. 24 Hour Party People
5. Wrote for Luck
6. Lazyitis – One Armed Boxer
7. Hallelujah (The MacColl Mix)
8. Step On
9. Kinky Afro
10. Loose Fit
11. Judge Fudge
12. Stinkin’ Thinkin’
13. Sunshine & Love
14. Angel

CD2

1. Tart Tart (The Reflex Revision)
2. 24 Hour Party People (Jon Carter’s Main Vocal)
3. W.F.L. (Think About The Future Mix)
4. Hallelujah (Club Mix)
5. Rave On (Club Mix)
6. Step On (Twistin’ My Melon Mix)
7. Kinky Groovy Afro Remix AKA “Euromix”
8. Loose Fit (Greg Wilson and Ché Wilson Remix)
9. Bob’s Yer Uncle (Perfecto Remix)
10. Stinkin’ Thinkin’ (Junior Style) (12” Mix)
11. Sunshine & Love (Fire Island Mix)