Music / Music for the Masses

"We're watching the world pass us by."

Music for the Masses, released in 1987 through Mute Records in the UK and Sire Records in the US, is the sixth studio album by English Alternative Dance band Depeche Mode.

Released one year after their previous album, Black Celebration, it further galvanizes the Darker and Edgier direction that the band had been forming since the addition of Alan Wilder and the appointment of Martin Gore to lead songwriter (both following Vincent Clarke's departure in 1982), a direction first fully realized on this album's direct predecessor. Unlike that album, producer and Mute Records head Daniel Miller took a far more hands-off approach here, citing internal tensions from the production of Black Celebration; in his place, production was more directly handled by David Bascombe, previously an engineer for Tears for Fears and Peter Gabriel. Like Black Celebration, production was co-handled by Depeche Mode themselves.

Music for the Masses spawned four singles: "Strangelove", "Never Let Me Down Again", "Behind the Wheel", and "Little 15". In addition, it was supported by an eponymous tour spanning from late 1987 to mid-1988. A live album and a concert film, both titled 101, were released simultaneously in 1989; both the album and the film were taken from the tour's final show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. The large turnout of the tour in this final show alone was indicative that the band had finally broken into the American mainstream with Music for the Masses (though their wider international success was yet to come), heralding the mainstream emergence of Alternative Rock as a whole within the same field alongside other releases in 1987 such as R.E.M.'s Document, 10,000 Maniacs' In My Tribe, U2's The Joshua Tree, Midnight Oil's Diesel and Dust, and fellow alternative dance group New Order's Substance.

Tracklist:

Side One

1. "Never Let Me Down Again" (4:47)
2. "The Things You Said" (4:02)
3. "Strangelove" (4:56)
4. "Sacred" (4:47)
5. "Little 15" (4:18)

Side Two

1. "Behind the Wheel" (5:18)
2. "I Want You Now" (3:44)
3. "To Have and to Hold" (2:51)
4. "Nothing" (4:18)
5. "Pimpf" (5:00)^note Contains the hidden track "Interlude #1 (Mission Impossible)" at 4:18

Bonus tracks on the original CD and cassette releases:

1. "Agent Orange" (5:05)
2. "Never Let Me Down Again (Aggro Mix)" (4:55)
3. "To Have and To Hold (Spanish Taster)" (2:34)
4. "Pleasure, Little Treasure (Glitter Mix)" (5:36)

Pain, will you return it, I'll trope it again:

• Anti-Love Song: "The Things You Said" and "Sacred"
• Audience Participation Song: "Never Let Me Down Again" serves as this in live performances, a trend popularized by the 101 concert film.
• Auto Erotica: The album frequently uses car-related imagery as metaphors for sexual relationships; this is most apparent in "Behind the Wheel," which ironically features a hot woman on a motorcycle in its music video.
• Book Ends: A somewhat subtle example with "Pleasure, Little Treasure", which closes the original CD and cassette versions of the album. The song is a brief return to the bouncy, minimalist Synth-Pop style of Speak & Spell and A Broken Frame, albeit with a noticeably darker edge to it, and acts as a closer to their '80s era in terms of their album discography^note when including singles, their last release in the decade was "Personal Jesus" in 1989, which sounds more in line with their later style than their earlier one. Additionally, the song's backing track sounds like a harder-tinged variation of that for "Dreaming of Me", the band's very first single from 1981.
• B-Side: Every single associated with this album features one: "Agent Orange" (for "Strangelove"), "Pleasure, Little Treasure" (for "Never Let Me Down Again"), "Route 66" (for "Behind the Wheel"), and "Stjärna" (for "Little 15"). Most of these would be featured as bonus tracks on different CD releases, with "Route 66" also being treated as a Siamese Twin Song with "Behind the Wheel" outside of the album.
• Changed for the Video: Inverted with "Strangelove": the single and video came out first, and the song was rearranged for the album. Also played with in a weird way with the 1988 Highjack Remix, the video for which uses the album version of the song, which came before the remix.
• Covers Always Lie: An odd variant: the back of the Sire Records CD release includes the disclaimer "the music on this Compact Digital Disc was originally recorded on analog equipment. We have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible, the sound of the original recording. Because of its high resolution, however, the Compact Disc can reveal limitations of the source tape," despite the fact that the album was recorded digitally and even features a "DDD" SPARS code on the exact same back cover. The disclaimer was standard for CD releases in the 1980s as a means of trying to reassure consumers that a bad-sounding CD wasn't the fault of the format, but rather the result of the sourced audio being poor to begin with (in part because a large number of early CD releases were sourced from multi-generation safety tapes instead of the original masters, leading to an anti-CD stigma among certain audiophiles); its inclusion here was most likely accidental given just how commonplace it still was in 1987.
• Darker and Edgier: As expected from Depeche Mode, this album continues the ever-darkening direction of the band's music and lyrics.
• Dark Reprise: "Little 15" repeats the melody of "A Question of Time" off of Black Celebration, but is far more moody and atmospheric in tone, being arranged for strings and piano.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Every music video associated with this album, courtesy of Anton Corbijn, himself an enthusiast for this trope. "Little 15" is a somewhat unusual example in that its video uses red tones rather than the traditional gray.
• Double Entendre: "Behind the Wheel", which makes frequent use of driving-themed metaphors for a BDSM relationship.
• Driven to Suicide: Implied in the music video for "Never Let Me Down Again". Dave is seen putting his head face-down on a table and his shoulders slumped in a way that implied that he's depressed. The music video then shows him driving out across the countryside to a lake, with the rest of the band chasing after him at first before being shown carrying him back from the lake, implying that he tried to drown himself and that it wasn't his first doing such a thing.
• Epic Instrumental Opener: The band used "Pimpf" as the intro music for the album's supporting tour, as seen in 101. The choice of song is somewhat ironic given that it was the closing track on Music for the Masses.
• Everything Is an Instrument: "I Want You Now" uses amplified breathing sounds as a percussion track, and "Interlude #1 (Mission Impossible)" features the frequent sound of clinking glasses.
• Fading into the Next Song:
  • The wind noise that closes out "Never Let Me Down Again" acts as a bridge into the start of "The Things You Said".
  • The Melismatic Vocals at the end of "Strangelove" segues directly into "Sacred".
  • A sample of Gratuitous Russian connects the end of "I Want You Now" to "To Have and to Hold", which itself uses a cold ending to hard-cut into "Nothing".
• Gratuitous Panning: Martin Gore's guitar in "Behind the Wheel" bounces from speaker to speaker.
• Gratuitous Russian: "To Have and to Hold" opens with a sample of Russian dialogue, repeated three times, that translates to "the report examines the evolution of nuclear arsenals and socio-psychological problems of the arms race."
• The Grunting Orgasm: Samples of one (mixed with a woman moaning) form the percussion track to "I Want You Now".
• Hidden Track: "Pimpf" contains the first of the band's "Interlude" series of hidden tracks. While definitely not their first use of this trope (that being the reprise of "Everything Counts" at the end of Construction Time Again), this was the first to be given the "Interlude" label.
• Homoerotic Subtext: On "Never Let Me Down Again", the narrator describes "taking a ride with [his] best friend," who is established to be male, but much of the lyricism implies that the relationship is a sexual one.
• Instrumental: "Pimpf" and the hidden interlude. Most of the bonus tracks on the original CD and cassette releases also count, with the exception of "Pleasure, Little Treasure".
• Intentionally Awkward Title: "Pimpf" is named after a Hitler Youth magazine.
• Ironic Episode Title: The name "Music for the Masses" was specifically chosen for this reason; the album is anything but music for the masses, being Depeche Mode's least commercially accessible album at that point. This is compounded by the album art, which on the front and back cover, the inner sleeve, and the A-side LP label features photographs of a series of megaphones in barren, desolate locations.
• Melismatic Vocals: Used as a bridge between "Strangelove" and "Sacred". The vocals for "Pimpf", meanwhile, consist entirely of these.
• Minimalistic Cover Art: The album cover, featuring just text and a small photograph of a megaphone against a mock-canvas background. The original plans◊ for the album cover took this even further, consisting of a Saul Bass-esque, white-on-orange rendition of a megaphone emitting sound waves; this image is still used on the final cover, albeit at a much smaller size.
• Mythology Gag:
  • "Little 15" reprises the melody of "A Question of Time".
  • The melody of "Behind the Wheel" quotes portions of "Nothing to Fear".
• New Wave Music: This is probably the last Depeche Mode album that can be considered this, with later albums being full-on Alternative Dance, and it spares no expense in exploring the darkest reaches of new wave's potential. "Pleasure, Little Treasure" particularly exemplifies this: it's the last track on the original CD and cassette releases of the album, and acts as a last hurrah to Depeche Mode's '80s sound, being their last purely Synth-Pop track and a Call-Back to the sound of their first two albums.
• Non-Indicative Name: The music video for the album version of "Strangelove" is billed as "Strangelove '88", a completely different mix of the song; the 1988 remix never actually got a music video.
• Obligatory Bondage Song: "Strangelove" and "Behind the Wheel".
• Ominous Latin Chanting: "Pimpf", which specifically makes use of Melismatic Vocals.
• Rearrange the Song: "Strangelove" was originally a more elaborate, club-oriented song that emphasized thudding bass, with this version being the one that saw release as the album's lead single. However, it was a poor match with the much darker, more experimental nature of the rest of the album. This, combined with a personal perception that the song was too cluttered, led Alan Wilder to strip it down and have it considerably rearranged by Daniel Miller for inclusion on the record. This version was then further remixed by Bomb the Bass and given a single release in the US in 1988 as the "Highjack Remix," alternately known as "Strangelove '88" (strangely though, the associated music video for the Highjack Remix was based on the album version).
• Rule of Three: The Russian dialogue that opens "To Have and to Hold" plays three times before the main song begins.
• Sequel Song: "Little 15" acts as one to "A Question of Time" off of Black Celebration, featuring an identical melody and lyrics that continue the story of the earlier song, showing how the unnamed 15-year-old has been getting along since being taken under the wing of the earlier song's narrator.
• Shout-Out: The first interlude is given the subtitle "Mission: Impossible".
• Siamese Twin Songs: Alternative radio stations usually played "Behind the Wheel" together with the band's cover of "Route 66" (originally the B-side to the "Behind the Wheel" single) via a remix by Nile Rodgers that combined both songs.
• Spiteful Spit: A rather phlegmy one can be heard in the intro to "To Have and To Hold".
• Splash of Color: The megaphone that appears throughout the Deliberately Monochrome video for "Strangelove" slowly turns bright red at the end.
• Step Up to the Microphone: Martin Gore sings lead on "The Things You Said" and "I Want You Now".

---