YMMV / Depeche Mode

• Archive Panic: Being one of the oldest recurring bands with fifteen studio albums (including a hefty number of songs), Depeche Mode can be a pain for those fans who want to listen to all their songs, from The '80s to The New '20s alone. And then there are the singles which are among their hundreds of songs. To be fair, the reissues do mitigate this by having many of the B-sides as bonus tracks. This also includes solo careers, such as Dave (Paper Monsters/Hourglass), Martin, and Alan. Along with this, any feature collaborations, song covers. And along with that, the remixes of all the main songs regarding all of these.
• Audience-Alienating Era:
  • A subsection of fans view the material from A Broken Frame to Some Great Reward to be this, due to the band both trying to live up to the expectations set by the Vince Clarke-era material and formulate a new, darker direction more in line with second lead songwriter Martin Gore's personal tastes. As a result, the songs from this era have a more "dipping toes in the water" feel to them, dabbling in Darker and Edgier sounds and subject matter but not going so whole-hog with it that it would risk alienating fans who jumped on board with Speak & Spell. To this contingency of fans, Black Celebration (which is already considered by most listeners to be a huge Growing the Beard moment) was the album that got Depeche Mode back on track, galvanizing the darker direction and better distinguishing the band from the Clarke-era sound.
  • Exciter is considered by most fans to be this; in fact, it is a nearly universal opinion. Indeed, the album is nearly hitless ("Dream On" and "Freelove" admittedly received solid radio rotation at the time, but that's only because they still were branded "Depeche Mode" and sounded quite pleasant). Exciter consists of fairly homogenous, downtempo Trip Hop songs which lack the aggression and strong melodies of its predecessor, and most of these tracks have unmemorably short titles (including "Freelove", "I Feel Loved" and "Goodnight Lovers", the latter of which is paired with "The Dead of Night"). No wonder the record did not fare well from the beginning and was regarded as Stylistic Suck. It's a shame too, because the band had already demonstrated that they could use trip hop to great effect on the brilliant non-album single "Only When I Lose Myself" in 1998, complete with an equally excellent B-side, "Surrender", which was seen as a sign of good things to come.
  • Much more debatable but some reviewers (especially in the UK, where Depeche Mode are somewhat looked down at compared to other regions) used to regard Ultra and sometimes even SoFaD as this. A few Brits believed that Depeche Mode "lost it" after Violator, which in this scheme was their last solid album. Most people, however, disagree.
  • Fans generally think that Depeche Mode completely lost it after the last splash of greatness named Playing the Angel. The following three albums were released by a group which had grown old enough to be seen as dinosaurs among the general public, and similarly to what plagued the songs on Exciter, the three post-Playing the Angel albums are indistinguishable in sound. Consequently, each is viewed as more of an obligation to support a tour than a genuine artistic product; this especially hit a tipping point with Spirit, whose incredibly basic attempts at being "topical" and lack of any other form of differentiation led audiences to accuse them of playing the relevancy card in an attempt to stay financially afloat.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The "Hole to Feed" video, directed by Eric Wareheim of later Tim & Eric fame, is just as bizarre as the show that he and Tim became better known for, among other things featuring what reporters described as "tongue fighting." Fan response was hugely negative when it premiered in 2009, and today the video is primarily seen as a bizarre blip on Depeche Mode's radar in the grand scheme of things.
• Chorus-Only Song: While it's usually remembered as a whole, their signature, "Enjoy the Silence", is typically only remembered for its chorus.
  All I ever wanted
  All I ever needed
  Is here
  In my arms
  Words are very
  Unnecessary
  They can only
  Do harm
• Covered Up: The Saturdays' cover of "Just Can't Get Enough" keeps getting used in Payless Shoe Source commercials. And Industrial Metal fans tend to remember Rammstein's cover of "Stripped" over the original. Johnny Cash and Marilyn Manson have covered "Personal Jesus", "Enjoy the Silence" was redone by Tori Amos, Lacuna Coil, Keane, and Breaking Benjamin, "People Are People" has been covered by RuPaul, Between the Buried and Me did a rendition of "Little 15," and The Faceless have covered "Shake the Disease".
• Critical Dissonance: The band have generally retained good marks with critics throughout their careers, barring the Sophomore Slump reputation of A Broken Frame and the initial skepticism towards Black Celebration, but among fans, the group is considered to have lost their edge after the '90s, save for the well-regarded Playing the Angel. Majority fan response towards Spirit in particular is outright negative, a stark contrast to the glowing praise it got in press reviews.
• Eclipsed by the Remix: "A Pain That I'm Used To" is frequently overshadowed by the Jacques Lu Cont Remix. Same thing goes for the music video mix. Good luck finding a Depeche Mode fan who prefers the album version of the song. As well as this, the Zephyr Mix of "In Your Room". The single version of "Freelove", according to many listeners is a big improvement over the album version. It is tight and rhythmic.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Black Celebration is overlooked in the band's discography and was despised by critics when it first landed, but is a fan favorite and has been thoroughly Vindicated by History as a result.
• Epic Riff: The guitar part in "Personal Jesus", which forms the backbone of the track and gives it a distinctly "punchy" feel to it that compliments the rhythm and lyrics.
• Franchise Original Sin: Spirit, their 2017 album, was disliked for being overly political in a pretentious way - specifically, a way that made the band look like they knew what they were talking about when they really didn't. The entirety of Construction Time Again, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" from Speak and Spell, "People Are People" from Some Great Reward, and "New Dress" from Black Celebration are all about political issues that Dave and Martin input into their songs and do precisely what they do on Spirit for. However, they conveyed it less pretentiously in that period and at least did know what they were talking about. The difference is that Spirit blatantly does not show any sense of modesty and Martin and Dave adopt a completely arrogant tone.
• Funny Moments: The music video for "It's No Good", where Dave plays a sleazy Lounge Lizard while people attack each other with glass bottles, which then cuts to the band walking over the subsequent wreckage. It ends with the two backup dancers keying the band's car and stranding them in the middle of NYC. Not to mention Anton Corbijn himself playing an emcee who misnames the song as "It's Too Good" and accidentally drops the mic while walking offstage. It might be a contender for the funniest thing the band has ever done.
• Gateway Series: A lot of rock fans who thought electronic music was "fake" or "boring" have had their minds completely blown when encountering the band. Likewise, a number of electronic fans found themselves drawn more to Alternative Rock and rock music in general by Depeche Mode, whose albums made heavy use of electric guitar since Violator (to say nothing of the rock-influenced rhythms that permeate their output overall).
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • In the '80s, Depeche Mode broke America, but the band was hugely popular in the Los Angeles area after being championed by the pioneering alternative station KROQ. The band's 1988 concert at the Rose Bowl was filmed and recorded for 101 and even now the band plays arenas in the L.A. area while playing amphitheatres in the rest of the country.
  • This trope was actually also played straight with Depeche Mode in the mid-1980s, as Germany was one of the nations where they achieved their biggest chart successes (i.e. it was the first major market where the band achieved a #1 single, with "People Are People"). To their chagrin, this also subjected the band to the whims of the German teen-scream press: when the band declined to appear on a German TV pop music programme, the show's sister magazine retaliated by printing false stories about the band's allegedly hating everyone under the age of twenty among other things.
  • The band also maintains a considerable fan following in Poland. Among other noteworthy aspects, their album Ultra is widely credited as a major source of influence in Polish rock, and the band continues to chart there with both old and new releases.
• Growing the Beard: Black Celebration is frequently considered by fans and critics to be the point where Depeche Mode came into their own artistically, to the point where some consider it their first truly "great" album. Meanwhile, the following album, Music for the Masses, was the point where the band started to be taken seriously by the general public and press, after having spent a good chunk of their career in the shadow of Speak & Spell and the association of Synth-Pop with early '80s kitsch.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "Blasphemous Rumours", about a young girl's failed suicide attempt, would become a lot bleaker in 1995 when Dave Gahan tried to kill himself the same way the girl did.
  • In 1986's "A Question of Lust", Martin sings: "And I need to drink more than you seem to think before I'm anyone's..." As it turns out, he later had a horrible struggle with alcoholism that eventually ended his marriage.
  • "New Dress"'s strong anti-press themes and its chorus "Princess Di is wearing a new dress" came out even stronger eleven years later when Princess Di died in a car crash because her chauffeur was fleeing paparazzi.
  • In the music video of Enjoy the Silence, Alan Wilder is the first band member to disappear in the wide-shot display of the band members. Four years after the release of Violator, Wilder left the band. Andrew Fletcher being the second to blink out only makes this harsher as he died in 2022.
  • One of the three videos for that song consists of nothing other than the band playing the song on the rooftop of one of the World Trade Center towers... 11 years before 9/11, it can be pretty eerie to watch in that regard.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The "Leave in Silence" video prominently features the band playing around with objects with their skin tinted a deep red, blue, and green. Five years later, the Blue Man Group would form and make a career out of playing around with objects to create music while painted deep blue.
• Ho Yay: "What's your name?", an almost comically upbeat case of Early-Installment Weirdness with the chorus "Hey, you're such a pretty boy." It's one of the more egregious Clarke-penned numbers.
• The Inverse Law of Fandom Levity: Most of Depeche Mode's songs are downright terrifying with a morally gray message courtesy of whoever's writing the song at the time, but most of the fandom jokes about those songs on a frequent basis or attempts to twist them into something sexual regardless of the original message.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Violator, plus "Enjoy the Silence", and anything related to it is usually the target of an average fan. Rarely will they go for the modern albums either, thinking their classic albums are superior instead. Unless, of course, it's Memento Mori.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Dave Gahan’s powerful, gorgeous vocals.
• Narm: Dave's delivery slides between hammy, slurry, and Creepy Monotone and really narms it up in places, especially in the early years. He took singing lessons in '97 and most material from after that is far less narmy. Most of it.
  • Several of their early music videos are hilarious because of the wacky hairdos, especially the videos from A Broken Frame.
  • The A Broken Frame era videos (all directed by Julien Temple) are so hated by the band that they've never been released on home video and probably never will be. They're available on the band's website, though. Besides those 3 videos, the beginning of the "Master and Servant" video certainly qualifies.
  • Most of the songs from Speak & Spell, the most prominent example being "What's Your Name", which is the band's least favorite song.
  • The lyrics for The Dead of Night are very narmy. Though since Martin Gore himself uses the word "corny", it is made intentionally. However due to Poe's Law this song still sounds too corny.
    We're the horniest boys
    With the corniest ploys
    Who take the easiest girls
    To our sleaziest worlds
  • Some listeners found "Where's the Revolution" off Spirit, the band's attempt at writing a Protest Song, a bit too ham-fisted and cliché.
• Narm Charm: Nobody really minds Dave Gahan's melodramatic delivery because he's Dave Gahan.
  • Dave himself plays up his own Narm Charm in the video for "It's No Good", having a blast playing a tacky lounge lizard.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The hidden track "Crucified" qualifies as well. The whole thing is something straight out of a horror movie soundtrack.
  • There's also "Pimpf" as well. Overblown orchestration, an ominous choir, and a creepy hidden track at the end will do that to you.
  • "Shout" from their first album. While live versions make it sound pretty normal, the mixing on the album version doesn't sound right.
  • The music video for "Wrong", where a man bound and covered by a mask is stuck behind the wheel of a car moving backwards causing havoc across a city. If you've have a nightmare you couldn't wake up from, this music video is exactly like that.
• Obscure Popularity: Yes, they are still quite popular, as they're a pop band, after all, but one will only listen to them and like them if they're a fan of Alternative Dance or Dark Wave, and when they're merged with Angst, which is a very rare human instinct in reality, despite their popularity potentially saying otherwise.
• Paranoia Fuel: Good lord, the lyrics for "Soothe My Soul".
• Seasonal Rot: While the departure of Alan Wilder in 1995 never really dented Depeche Mode's popularity with critics, a large number of fans believe the band has only gone downhill ever since he left. Examining the band's album ratings on aggregator site Rate Your Music, the material after Ultra sees its ratings drop steadily lower, with Playing the Angel being the sole exception (being ranked as roughly on par with the Wilder-era material), and Spirit being the lowest-ranked album in Depeche Mode's entire discography, not even cracking a 3.0 (a distinction that generally conveys majority disapproval).
• Signature Song: "Enjoy the Silence" and, to an extent, "Personal Jesus".
• Sophomore Slump: Vince Clarke, the primary songwriter, left the group after the success of the first album, and Martin Gore replaced him as chief songwriter afterwards. The combination of the expectations set by Speak & Spell and Gore's markedly different songwriting tastes meant that the band's second album, A Broken Frame, suffered from attempting to find a compromise between two radically different directions, being both as upbeat as Speak & Spell and somewhat Darker and Edgier on a song-by-song basis. Predictably, the album received criticisms of being directionless and became a source of Creator Backlash from Gore. Nonetheless, it still sold well, even if Clarke basically stole the band's commercial thunder with his new act, Yazoo.
  • The shoe did end up on the other foot briefly, when Clarke's first single with Erasure, "Who Needs Love (Like That)", tanked while Depeche Mode were becoming bigger than ever internationally; some observers jokingly suggested that maybe Martin Gore should write Clarke a song.
  • Also averted in a way, as Construction Time Again is Martin's 2nd album as primary songwriter, but it's pretty awesome and the lead single is one of their most beloved songs.
• Spiritual Successor: With the band's dark, keyboard-driven sound, and deep-voiced sex symbol lead singer, Depeche Mode could be the second coming of The Doors.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Quite a few songs from Speak and Spell sound similar to later Vince Clarke songs, like "Nodisco" (Which sounds like "Don't Go"), and "Boys Say Go" (which sounds like "Who Needs Love (Like That)"). Of course, this is because he re-worked them years later, and as so their later re-incarnations sound much better.
  • "Shouldn't Have Done That" sounds kind of like "Portabello Road".
• Tear Jerker:
  • "Blasphemous Rumours", a song about a girl attempting suicide, living, becoming happy and dying a year later anyway. Even sadder is it was Based on a True Story
  • "Precious," which was written for Martin Gore's children as he was divorcing their mother.
  • The video for "In Your Room" is full of Call Backs to their older videos, because Anton Corbijn genuinely thought Dave would be dead from his heroin addiction before he got a chance to direct another video.
  • "Waiting For The Night", as the most common interpretation is that the protagonist is about to die soon but is Not Afraid to Die, and seems to welcome it, with the actual moment of death being described as wonderful and involving angels appearing.
  • "See You" is another huge one, as it's all about a childhood friend/girlfriend he hopes he can be reunited with.
  • "Walking In My Shoes", which can be interpreted as being from Dave's perspective at the height of his drug abuse problems. Most of the tracks from Songs of Faith and Devotion could qualify, in particular "Condemnation" (about the sins and sanctimoniousness of organized relgion), "Judas" (about a Love Martyr who bears the pain for someone who doesn't appreciate them), and "Higher Love" (about trying to find faith in a higher power and the frustration of nothing coming to fruition).
  • "Home", which is a song about accepting early death, written by Martin Gore and presumably about either Dave Gahan's near-fatal drug addiction or Gore's own alcoholism. The music video doesn't help either, showing a tall, pale, and bald man walking around a house and observing the various people who have lived inside of it.
  • "New Dress", which is about how the press ignores real-life tragedy, famine, economic downturn, disease, etc. in favor of talking trivial celebrity news.
  • On a meta level, Andy Fletcher's untimely passing.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The reason why albums Ultra, Exciter, Sounds of the Universe, Delta Machine and Spirit aren't as well-received as their other albums is due to Dave and Martin changing their style significantly, switching from their traditional Synth-Pop sound to something more Alternative Rock, with fans thinking they're trying too hard or too little depending on which one.
• Tough Act to Follow: Their post-SoFaD releases have fallen into this, especially after their highly-regarded releases in the early 1990s.
• Wangst: From "More Than a Party", this line: "Then take all the ice cream so we've got none!" And considering the large volume of angsty songs they have, some of them are bound to cross over into Wangstiness.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Depeche Mode is clearly not for children to hear in the first place, but within their music itself, one can see that they can appeal to such an audience due to the smooth sound design, light tones among dark sounds, and use of metaphors to work around darker themes, alongside the absence of cursing. The subject matters of deviation and politics, alongside the fact that the actual Dave and Martin are very blunt and politically-driven people in real life and are very much willing to swear once ("Fail" on Spirit), plus their age ratings, are quite obvious hints that they are not for children, unless that child happens to be rebellious.

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