Depeche Mode: Music for the Masses [MUTE RECORDS]

Why you'll love it

This remastered edition comes in a gatefold jacket with a raised, spot-varnished front cover. The album reached No. 10 in the UK and No. 2 in West Germany, broke the band in America and has sold an estimated 5.5 million copies.

This edition

• Remastered
• Gatefold jacket
• Raised spot-varnished cover

About the album

For the first time since their 1981 debut, Depeche Mode made an album without Daniel Miller in the producer's chair. Instead they hired David Bascombe, fresh from Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" and Tears for Fears, and Alan Wilder stepped up to steer the production, recording in Paris and London and mixing in Denmark. Dave Gahan was about to become a father, and Gore had just moved back to London from West Berlin.

Martin Gore wrote the songs on an Akai synth at home in London, and the band blew them up to widescreen size. "Never Let Me Down Again" builds to a huge, swaying coda, "Strangelove" pulses and pleads, "Behind the Wheel" rolls along on a heavy, hypnotic groove, and "Little 15" is a moody, orchestral curveball. Anton Corbijn's videos and photos gave them a new, stark black-and-white look to match.

The tour that followed was captured on 101, and the album later made 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The title was a cheeky one for a band still seen as outsiders; the masses, rather sportingly, played along.

Also at Kops: more Depeche Mode on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Mute / Sire (cat# 19802841121), a reissue of the 1987 album.