Music / Some Great Reward

"Let's play 'Master and Servant.'"

Some Great Reward, released in 1984 through Mute Records in the UK and Sire Records in the US, is the fourth studio album by English Alternative Dance group Depeche Mode. Their follow-up to the well-received Construction Time Again, it refines the new style of industrial-influenced Synth-Pop developed on that album and continues its darkening of the band's output. In particular, Some Great Reward hardens the beats in the band's songs and trades out most of the sociopolitical commentary from its predecessor in favor of more personal and sexually-charged lyrics, most notably on the Obligatory Bondage Song "Master and Servant" and the overtly cynical "Blasphemous Rumours". While Construction Time Again set the tone for the band's later output from a musical perspective, it was this album that set the stage for their forthcoming lyrical direction.

Some Great Reward was accompanied by three singles: "People Are People", "Master and Servant", and the double-A-side "Blasphemous Rumours"/"Somebody" (released as such due to religious concerns regarding the title and content of "Blasphemous Rumours").

Tracklist:

Side One

1. "Something to Do" (3:45)
2. "Lie to Me" (5:04)
3. "People Are People" (3:52)
4. "It Doesn't Matter" (4:45)
5. "Stories of Old" (3:12)

Side Two

1. "Somebody" (4:26)
2. "Master and Servant" (4:13)
3. "If You Want" (4:40)
4. "Blasphemous Rumours" (6:21)

Share my innermost tropes, know my intimate details:

• Album Title Drop: Some Great Reward comes from a line in the pre-chorus near the end of "Lie to Me".
  So lie to me, like they do it in the factory
  Make me think that at the end of the day
  Some great reward will be coming my way
• Belief Makes You Stupid: "Lie to Me":
  Belief is the way, the way of the innocent
  And when I say innocent, I should say naive
• Blasphemous Boast: "Stories of Old" features the line "I'll probably burn in Hell for saying this, but I'm really in heaven whenever we kiss."
• Book Ends: "Blasphemous Rumours" features a line about the protagonist's mother's tears falling near the beginning and end of the song.
• Bungled Suicide: How "Blasphemous Rumours" opens.
  Girl of sixteen, whole life ahead of her
  Slashed her wrists, bored with life
  Didn't succeed, thank the Lord
  For small mercies
• Cheated Death, Died Anyway: The main character of "Blasphemous Rumours" survives a suicide attempt, only to die in a car crash two years later; the narrator questions his faith in God as a result of the cruel irony.
• Darker and Edgier: The album continues the band's exploration of increasingly dark territory with their music and lyrics, in particular writing far more personal and moody songs and amping up the industrial influences.
• Death by Irony: Played for Drama on "Blasphemous Rumours", in which a girl gets fatally run over by a car just two years after surviving a suicide attempt.
• Double Entendre: "Master and Servant" uses overt BDSM imagery as a metaphor for modern life.
• Downer Ending: The album closes with "Blasphemous Rumours", a song about a girl who attempts suicide, fails, undergoes a spiritual awakening, and gets fatally hit by a car - with the narrator of the song raging against God for having a "sick sense of humor".
• Driven to Suicide: The protagonist of "Blasphemous Rumours".
• Epic Rocking: "Blasphemous Rumours" at roughly 6 and a half minutes.
• Everything Is an Instrument: Like its predecessor, many of the instruments on this album are processed samples of various things being hit, dropped, and/or broken, plus the occasional modified voice samples.
• Fanservice: "Master and Servant"'s video was loaded with leather and chains.
• Franchise Codifier: Though Construction Time Again marked Depeche Mode's shift to Alternative Dance, it was Some Great Reward that definitively established the brand they would follow on later albums. Its darker and more refined sound and its introspective, oftentimes sexually-charged lyrics (in addition to their already-established Protest Song fare) would both become hallmarks of the band for the rest of their careers, with later albums only ramping these elements up.
• God Is Evil: "Blasphemous Rumours" depicts God as this, with the narrator speculating that He enjoys tormenting people by playing games with life and death for kicks.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: "Somebody", only in the single version.
• Hidden Track: "Blasphemous Rumours" appears to fade out roughly a minute and a half before the 6:21 mark designated on the track list, only to get cut off by an unconnected ambient instrumental that takes up the remainder of the song's runtime.
• Last Note Nightmare: "Blasphemous Rumours", and the album with it, ends with breathing on a ventilator, implied to be the girl after she's taken off life support.
• Lonely Piano Piece: Again, "Somebody", the first of many slow ballads Martin Gore would write for the band.
• Longest Song Goes Last: The 6:21 "Blasphemous Rumours" closes out the album.
• Non-Appearing Title: Averted for the second time on a Depeche Mode album. It was previously averted on Construction Time Again with the song "Pipeline".
• Obligatory Bondage Song: "Master and Servant", the first of Depeche Mode's many forays into this trope.
• Protest Song: "People Are People". Word of God states that it's specifically meant to be an anti-racism song, though Alan Wilder interpreted it as anti-war (note that that The Falklands War was still in recent memory at the time).
• Redemption Equals Death: Criticized on "Blasphemous Rumours", in which the protagonist's death shortly after undergoing a spiritual awakening is taken more as a sign of God being a shit comedian.
• Seen-It-All Suicide: "Blasphemous Rumours" describes the motive for the protagonist's suicide attempt as being "bored with life."
• Step Up to the Microphone: Martin Gore sings the choruses on "Something to Do", the choruses, pre-choruses (with Dave Gahan), and outro on "People Are People", and lead vocals on "It Doesn't Matter" and "Somebody".
• Teenage Death Songs: "Blasphemous Rumours" is about a 16-year-old girl who fails a suicide attempt only to die a sickly ironic death in an automobile accident at 18.
• Title-Only Chorus: "Something to Do"

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