When the new set of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominations was announced in October, the piece I wrote was kind of dismissive of Depeche Mode's chances of getting in; this is their 3rd time being nominated after over a decade of eligibility. But the more I think about it, the more I hope this is their year. It would feel right after one of their closest contemporaries, The Cure, got in last year, although it's a little funny to think they could get in the same year as one of the biggest acts they influenced, Nine Inch Nails.

Depeche Mode deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Nothing
2. Waiting For The Night
3. Black Celebration
4. Two Minute Warning
5. Shouldn't Have Done That
6. Photographic
7. But Not Tonight
8. Lie To Me
9. Halo
10. The Love Thieves
11. The Things You Said
12. I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead
13. Rush
14. Blue Dress / Interlude #3
15. Something To Do
16. Shame
17. Monument
18. Here Is The House

Tracks 6 and 12 from Speak & Spell (1981)
Tracks 5 and 17 from A Broken Frame (1982)
Tracks 4 and 16 from Construction Time Again (1983)
Tracks 8 and 15 from Some Great Reward (1984)
Tracks 3, 7 and 18 from Black Celebration (1986)
Tracks 1 and 11 from Music For The Masses (1987)
Tracks 2, 9 and 14 from Violator (1990)
Track 13 from Songs Of Faith And Devotion (1993)
Track 10 from Ultra (1997)

Depeche Mode have had an impressively steady career, despite a couple major lineup changes and issues like Dave Gahan's highly publicized drug problem in the '90s. They're coming up on 40 years together, but they've never gone more than a little over 4 years without a new studio album, when almost every other big band has started taking longer hiatuses between albums by their 3rd or 4th decade together. And even if they've slid a bit from their peak ubiquity, they've been pretty commercially and creatively resilient -- their last few records, including their 14th album, 2017's Spirit, were pretty good, even if I decided to only make room to cover their albums up through the end of the '90s.

Depeche Mode's debut album Speak & Spell is famously their only album written by Vince Clarke, who went on to form Erasure. And while "Just Can't Get Enough" is almost comically far lighter and brighter than just about anything Depeche Mode did after that when Martin Gore took over as the primary songwriter, it still kind of holds up as a great song that fits into their catalog. And I was prepared for Speak & Spell to be totally in that upbeat tone, it isn't entirely. Hell, one of the songs is named "I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead."

I was also surprised at how long some of the Clarke songs like "Photographic" and the decidedly lighter "Boys Say Go!" stayed in the band's live repertoire, both performed hundreds of times after he left the group. Depeche Mode have played thousands of shows over the years, and some of their most played deep cuts include "Black Celebration," "Halo" (which was not one of Violator's 4 singles but still got radio airplay), "Photographic," "Something To Do," "Waiting For The Night," and "Rush," among others that I didn't have room for here.

It took a long time for me to come around to Depeche Mode, I have to admit. I remember in my budding enthusiasm for popular music circa 1990 when "Losing My Religion" and "Enjoy The Silence" were huge, I kind of took R.E.M. and Depeche Mode to be these very serious adult groups and it took a while to look at either of them differently or understand that they were kind of pioneering '80s alternative bands. Now I think "Enjoy The Silence" is a masterpiece and Violator is a great album, but some of the earlier albums that can feel a little dour and dense to me, like Some Great Reward (which, I recently learned, was followed up with the hilarious titled VHS release Some Great Videos). I think Black Celebration is the one that grew on me the most in the course of making this playlist.

My dad liked Depeche Mode and played Songs Of Faith And Devotion a lot when it came out. When he passed away it was one of the albums in his old binder CDs that I keep in my car now so I listen to it now and again, although it's not really one of my favorite albums by the band. I put "Walking In My Shoes" on the playlist I had on at his memorial service, and now I find that song even more haunting than it was before with the memory of hearing it in that context.

I find the division of labor between Martin Gore the songwriter and Dave Gahan the singer interesting -- in modern rock it's been fairly rare for the lead singer not to be the chief lyricist, with a varied handful of exceptions (Oasis, Alice In Chains, Fall Out Boy). In a weird way I think the Gahan/Gore dynamic is very Daltrey/Townshend -- you still hear Gore's voice on the albums fairly often, but in kind of vulnerable moments, before he hands it back over to his big-voiced bare-chested rock star alter ego.

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