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Music for the Masses
1987 studio album by Depeche Mode From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Music for the Masses is the sixth studio album by the English electronic music band Depeche Mode, released on 28 September 1987[6] by Mute Records. The album was supported by the Music for the Masses Tour, which launched their fame in the United States when they performed at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. The tour led to the creation and filming of the documentary/live album titled 101.[7]
Considered one of the band's best albums, Music for the Masses was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2006).[8] The album reached number 10 on the UK Albums Chart.
It was preceded by the singles "Strangelove", released on 13 April, "Never Let Me Down Again", released on 24 August. Two other singles followed the release of the album, one being "Behind the Wheel", released 28 December, and the other being "Little 15", which was released on 16 May the following year.
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Background and recording
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Depeche Mode had released their album Black Celebration in early 1986,[9] followed up with a supporting tour which lasted through the middle of that year,[10] and contributed the song "But Not Tonight" to the soundtrack to the movie Modern Girls (1986).[11] Daniel Miller, citing growing tension in the studio during the recording of Black Celebration, stepped away from production duties.[12] With Miller's approval, the band approached David Bascombe to co-produce Music for the Masses, who had previously worked as a recording engineer with Tears for Fears and Peter Gabriel.[13] Music for the Masses saw the band using heavy amounts of sampling,[14] much like they did in Black Celebration.
The album was recorded at Studio Guillame Tell outside of Paris, and mixed in Puk Studio in Denmark.[15] The song "Little 15" was one of the last to come together during the sessions, as the band wasn't quite sure how to put it together.[16] The group, having seen A Zed & Two Noughts during the sessions, decided to try the song in the style of its soundtracks, and "from there, it was easy. It just flowed."[16] "Behind the Wheel" had a sequence of four chords that kept cycling, which Alan Wilder compared to Penrose stairs; "once you get around, you're back at the bottom again. That's kind of how the chord sequence works [in the song]."[16] For "Pimpf", Wilder said that it "starts off with one little riff that just feeds on itself. ... You've got this one thing and we just keep adding and adding and adding to it."[16]
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Music
The album is considered to showcase a "darker" side of the "radio-friendly post-punk-synth-pop" movement that Depeche Mode had become associated with. The album is characterised as exhibiting a "theatrical aura," and incorporates elements such as chamber choir and samples of radio broadcasts. According to Sal Cinquemani of American Songwriter: "The album is steeped in high drama, each track spilling into the next like a pop-rock opera."[17] According to Ned Raggett of AllMusic: "It feels huge throughout, like they taped Depeche recording at the world's largest arena show instead of in a studio."[18]
Lyrical themes explored on the album include repentance and redemption.[17]
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Album title
Band members Andy Fletcher and Martin Gore both explained the album's title was conceived as a joke, after Gore found an old album called Music for the Millions.[19] Fletcher said, "The title's ... a bit tongue-in-cheek, really. Everyone is telling us we should make more commercial music, so that's the reason we chose that title."[13] According to Gore, the title "was a joke on the uncommerciality of [the album]. It was anything but music for the masses!"[20] Miller agreed, saying that the name Music for the Masses was "about how Depeche Mode were forever destined to be a cult band who could never quite crack the mainstream,"[15] disproved by the success of Depeche Mode's subsequent tours and albums.[15]
Artwork
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The megaphone (or its iconic representation) on the album's cover was used during the breadth of the album's release: at press events, on the covers of the album's singles, and during the tour. Alan Wilder gave credit to Martyn Atkins, who had been a longtime Depeche Mode collaborator, for the use of the megaphone. "[Martyn came] up with this idea of a speaker, but, to give the kind of ironic element which the title has, to put this speaker in a setting which wasn't really to do with the masses at all. It was, in fact, the opposite. So you end up with this kind of eerie thing where you get these speakers or megaphones in the middle of a setting that doesn't suit it at all, like a desert or whatever."[13] They took the megaphone, mounted it to a pole, and drove up to the Peak District to take pictures.[21][16] Atkins called the cover his favourite of all the Depeche Mode album covers he was involved in.[16]
An early alternative cover was rejected for the album. The rejected cover was also designed by Atkins and a test pressing copy was auctioned off by Wilder in 2011. It features a white-and-orange stylised design of the megaphone emitting sound waves.[22] This alternate artwork was planned to be used for a budget series of albums, but the project was scrapped.[23]
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Tour
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The Music for the Masses Tour was a 7-leg tour that ran from October 1987 through June 1988.[24] The first leg through Europe started in Madrid and finished mid-November in Paris.[24] On December 1st, the first of two North American legs commenced in San Francisco and culminated three weeks later in New York City.[24] In January 1988, the group played an eleven-date UK tour, which was followed by the second European leg beginning in Hamburg, West Germany in early February; the leg wrapped up in Vienna in late March.[24] The fifth leg through eastern Europe ran for a few weeks in March before the band played four dates for the leg in Japan.[24] This was followed later in the month by the start of the second North American leg, which began in Mountain View, California.[24] The entire tour concluded mid-June with a concert at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, where the band performed in front of a sold-out crowd of nearly 80,000 people,[15] released as the live album 101 in 1988.[7] Nitzer Ebb was scheduled to be the opening act for the tour on the North American leg, but issues with immigration prevented the band from joining; Nitzer Ebb would join Depeche Mode in America two years later for the World Violation Tour.[25]
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Re-release
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In 2006, Music for the Masses became one of the first Depeche Mode albums (along with Speak & Spell and Violator) to be released on a special two-disc SACD/CD Hybrid + DVD format, in the vein of their eleventh studio album Playing the Angel (2005), which had a limited edition SACD + DVD release. The format was the same as Playing the Angel's, the first disc had a special digitally remastered version of the album, while the DVD had the album on three formats (PCM Stereo, 5.1 surround sound and DTS 5.1) plus bonus tracks, and a documentary on the album. The re-release preserves the album as it was originally intended. Thus, the four bonus tracks do not appear on the SACD, but appear on the DVD. The DVD also features all B-sides from the Music for the Masses era, but unlike the album and the bonus tracks, the B-sides are only available in PCM Stereo.
The documentary, a 37-minute short film titled Depeche Mode: 1987–88 (Sometimes You Do Need Some New Jokes), is an extensive look at the album, featuring commentary from a wide variety of people, including the current Depeche Mode, former member Wilder, producer David Bascombe, Daniel Miller, Daryl Bamonte, Atkins, Anton Corbijn, and others. The documentary features new facts on the album, and also an extensive look at the film 101.
The re-release was released on 3 April 2006 in Europe. The US version was delayed to 2 June 2006 and is only available on a CD + DVD format, with no SACD. The DVD on all the versions are region independent, but differ in television formats: PAL or NTSC. The remastered album was released on vinyl on 2 March 2007 in Germany and 5 March 2007 internationally.
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Critical reception
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The album mostly received favourable reviews upon release. Robert Christgau complimented the abnormal road symbolism of the lyrics, particularly on "Little 15", and believed that apart from the sadomasochistic metaphors, Depeche Mode succeeded in turning "adolescent Weltschmerz into something catchy, sexy and seemingly significant".[36] NME's Jane Solanas felt Gore was "at his obsessive best" on Music for the Masses, particularly on "Never Let Me Down Again", which she called "an intriguing masterpiece, combining homo-eroticism with drug euphoria."[37] In a less enthusiastic review, Paul Mathur from Melody Maker was ambivalent towards the group's more mature, minimalist aesthetic and said although they had departed from their simpler pop sound, the record was "seamless, fluid, and, once the lights are out, particularly dull."[38]
In a retrospective review, Q magazine found the narratives on Music for the Masses to be among Depeche Mode's most uncertain and contemplative, and that most of its songs were "real diamonds in the darkness ... this was the point at which Depeche Mode were first taken seriously."[29] Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani said that Music for the Masses showed the gloomier side of the "post-punk synthpop" scene during the 1980s and was a success with both critics and consumers.[39] Alternative Press called the record "articulate, intricate electronic music that lacked the tinny feel of DM's early synth pop".[40] Music for the Masses was listed by Slant Magazine at number 75 on their list of "Best Albums of the 1980s".[41] The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2006).[42]
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Track listing
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All tracks are written by Martin L. Gore. All lead vocals by Dave Gahan, except where noted.
- Notes
- "Pimpf" includes hidden track "Interlude #1 (Mission Impossible)" at 4:18
- On some copies of the cassette the album is presented on side 1 with the four bonus tracks at the start of side 2.
2006 re-release
- Disc one is a hybrid SACD/CD with a multi-channel SACD layer.
- Disc two is a DVD containing Music for the Masses in DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 and PCM Stereo plus bonus material
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Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Music for the Masses.[43]
Depeche Mode
Technical
- Depeche Mode – production
- David Bascombe – production, engineering
- Daniel Miller – additional production, help
Artwork
- Martyn Atkins – design, photography
- David Jones – design, photography
- Mark Higenbottam – design, photography
Charts
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Certifications
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Notes
- "Pimpf" includes hidden track "Interlude #1 (Mission Impossible)" at 4:18
References
External links
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