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Latest Release
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- 5 APR 2024
- 5 Songs
- Violator (Deluxe) · 1990
- The Singles 86-98 · 1990
- Violator (Deluxe) · 1989
- Violator (Deluxe) · 1990
- Music for the Masses (Deluxe Edition) · 1987
- Playing the Angel (Deluxe) · 2005
- Speak and Spell (Deluxe) · 1981
- Ultra (Deluxe) · 1997
- Some Great Reward (Deluxe) · 1984
- The Singles 81-85 · 1981
Essential Albums
- If you had to pinpoint an exact date and location for the moment that Depeche Mode morphed from cult British band to million-selling mainstream success, it would be 20 March 1990 at Los Angeles music emporium Wherehouse Records. It was here that the then-quartet turned up for an in-store performance to celebrate the release of their seventh record Violator. The shop could hold 150 people. An estimated 17,000 fans turned up. With the numbers swelling, police evacuated the band from the store and shut the place down, prompting disgruntled members of the waiting crowd to start rioting. The furore made evening news reports across the country. Depeche Mode had become the big story. From the outside, 1990’s Violator felt very much like the record that everything had been leading up to for the electro pioneers from Basildon. Their triumphant live album, 101, released the previous year, captured an exhilarating performance at California’s Rose Bowl and seemed very much the image of a band who had already joined the top tier. But inside the group, there was frustration. Keyboardist, guitarist and chief songwriter Martin Gore felt as if they were hitting their heads against a brick wall in the States, bemoaning that a run of records dating back to 1984’s Some Great Reward had all achieved similar sales. Creatively too, there was some agitation. Keyboardist Alan Wilder had grown fed up with arriving at album sessions to find fully fleshed-out demo versions leaving little room for manoeuvre. Encouraged by producer Flood, they switched up their way of working. Nowhere is the recalibration more evident than on Violator’s BRIT Award-winning second single. Starting life as a stark, ghostly Gore ballad, “Enjoy the Silence” was reworked by Wilder into a euphoric, expansive banger. Its fusion of epic rock dynamism with pulsing, ecstatic beats perfectly captured where Depeche Mode were as a band as the ’80s became the ’90s. The clubbier aspects of Violator were designed to reflect their influence on the burgeoning Detroit house scene, with the more techno-rock sonics nodding to the shadow they’d cast over a New Wave of acolytes, Nine Inch Nails among them. They were emboldened to go further and bigger than they ever had before: the dystopian blues march of “Personal Jesus”, the cascading rhythmic groove of “World in My Eyes”,the rewired alt-rock of “Policy of Truth”. Violator went on to sell over 7 million records worldwide and sent Depeche Mode stratospheric. The brick wall had been well and truly demolished. Looking back on it a couple of decades later, the band’s late co-founder Andrew “Fletch” Fletcher described it as a “perfect 10” record. He was right. Violator was the Depeche Mode album where everything aligned in glorious harmony.
- 2023
Artist Playlists
- Swaggering attitude and phenomenal songwriting made them New Wave icons.
- Inner struggles played out against mercurial electronic styles.
- Depeche Mode honours the late Andy Fletcher on their latest tour. Get the set list here.
- Commanding frontmen, electronic greats and soulful artists abound.
- Stadium-sized synth-rock.
- Grab the mic and sing along with some of their biggest hits.
Live Albums
- 1989
More To Hear
- Conversation around their latest album 'Memento Mori.'
- Playing influences and those inspired by the synth-pop band.
- Q-Tip and The Crew spin Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, and Prince.
- The legendary group, live in Ibiza.
More To See
About Depeche Mode
Electronic pioneers who became arena-filling pop titans, Depeche Mode aren’t just icons of New Wave; their early years represent the seismic shift that triggered a tsunami of synthesiser-centred acts. When the UK group got their start in 1980, punk had wiped the slate clean; aspiring young musicians were trading guitars for electronics, and everything felt possible. Depeche Mode proved as much, masterminding an austere yet bewitchingly melodic sound built on cutting-edge synths and clean-lined drum programming. Their sound grew darker after their comparatively chipper 1981 debut, Speak & Spell, once founding member Vince Clarke left to form Yazoo, then Erasure; he was replaced by Alan Wilder, who remained in the band until 1995, leaving original members Martin Gore, Dave Gahan and Andy Fletcher as the group’s long-standing line-up. Under Gore’s songwriting, key themes emerged: primarily the pleasures of sin and the relief of redemption, with occasional forays into the kinds of dorm-room philosophising (“Blasphemous Rumours”) that have made Depeche Mode perennial faves for generations of brooding teenagers. The title of 1987’s Music for the Masses came to look like a premonition: In 1988, they corralled 75,000 fans for a Los Angeles concert—numbers that, just a few years earlier, would have been unheard of for a synth-pop group. While their sound remained strictly electronic, Gahan developed the leering voice and louche stage presence of a swaggering rock star (exhibit A: 1989’s bluesy “Personal Jesus”, which Johnny Cash himself would eventually cover). 1990’s Violator is widely hailed as their masterpiece: lush, mysterious and multidimensional, pairing some of Depeche Mode’s most compelling songwriting with their most advanced electronic sound design. That record established the formula they’ve continued to tweak album after album. Having inspired artists across techno, alternative rock, emo and pop, Depeche Mode were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020—the ultimate confirmation of the synthesiser’s enduring influence.
- ORIGIN
- Basildon, Essex, England
- FORMED
- March 1980
- GENRE
- Pop