The song was a number one single in the UK Singles Chart for four weeks during the summer of 1979, and ranks as the sixth biggest hit of the UK in 1979. Written by Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers, the piano ballad was the band's second single to reach number one on the UK chart. "I Don't Like Mondays" is a song by Irish new wave group The Boomtown Rats about the 1979 Cleveland Elementary School shooting in San Diego.

So perhaps I wrote the perfect senseless song to illustrate it. The Fine Art of Surfacing The Boomtown Rats.

It wasn’t an attempt to exploit tragedy. It was released in 1979 as the lead single from their third album, The Fine Art of Surfacing.