All I Ever Wanted Depeche Mode seems like they ought to be the
epitome of something, being one of the most popular and certainly the most
long-lived of the British synth-pop groups that emerged in the early 1980s.
They were stars in England almost from their first release in 1980, although
they didn’t break through in the U.S. until “People Are People” went to Number
13 in 1985. But “Just Can’t Get Enough” – which, let’s face it, is a much
better song – had crashed the dance charts in 1981, off the band’s first
album, Speak & Spell.
The primary songwriter
on Speak & Spell was Vince Clarke, who wrote nine of its
11 songs, including “Just Can’t Get Enough,” but he left the band after that
first record came out. “We basically just
weren't getting on,” Clarke said later. "We were really young, and we did
quite well very quickly, and it all became too much.” Starting with
their second album, Martin Gore took over the songwriting, and he proved to be
almost as good at it as Clarke. (Clarke, by the way, was born Vincent Martin, but
changed his name because he was on the dole and would lose his benefits if the
government knew he was making money via his band.)
Changing
chief songwriters is as fraught a move as changing frontmen, and even moreso
for a synth-pop group, where the material is pretty much the entire band. Pink
Floyd changed primary songwriters and thrived, as did the Doobie Brothers, but it’s pretty rare for a band
to succeed that way.
Depeche Mode only got bigger with Gore as its composer, although I don't think they ever got better. The band’s 1990 album Violator spawned
three hit singles in the U.S., including “Enjoy the Silence,” their only Top
Ten hit, and “Personal Jesus,” arguably their best post-Clarke song. They had
Top Forty hits as late as 1997, and had a Number One hit on the U.S. dance
charts as late as 2013 with “Heaven.”
That
should have made them some kind of grizzled legend in the electronic-dance
music world, but they never quite seemed to attain that status. Daft Punk has saluted artists ranging from Philip Glass to the Eagles as influences, but never, to my knowledge, Depeche Mode. Depeche were never
as good as other 1980s dance titans like New Order or Pet Shop Boys, even
though they outlasted those groups as hitmakers.
Let’s Play Master and
Servant Vince Clarke seems to be the sticking point here. It’s hard for me to
support a band that lost its key member after one album, and was never as good again. After Clarke left
Depeche Mode, he formed Yaz with Alison Moyet and released “Don’t Go” and
“Situation,” both of which are better than anything in the Depeche catalog.
Then he went on to form Erasure, which was a lot more fun than Depeche,
especially with “A Little Respect.” And none of those groups was the best
British dance-pop group of the 1980s; New Order was.
Depeche Mode blazed
trails in EDM, arguably laying the groundwork for a genre that continues to be
vital today. “Personal Jesus” is 26 years old and still sounds pretty fresh.
They even established themselves as a must-see live act, which you wouldn’t
expect from a synth-pop band. I like Depeche Mode; honestly, I do. I just
don’t see what they’ve done to differentiate themselves from other bands of
their ilk. New Order hasn’t even ever been nominated, for pity’s sake. I vote
no on Depeche Mode.
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