“Walking in My Shoes” by Depeche Mode, Monday, October 9, 2023

October 09, 2023

In 1985, Depeche Mode called their sound industrial pop. The group had similar pop aspirations as synth-pop groups that littered the '80s music scene, but there is certainly a difference between the band’s early and later discography. This is partly due to the departure of keyboardist Vince Clark who left the band after their first album to form the electronic group Erasure. When the band from Basildon, England, debuted in 1980, they started in the new wave scene that was breaking worldwide, including in America. Their earlier albums are often classified as synth-pop and garnered modest hits in Britain and America.

FORBIDDEN FRUITS FOR ME TO EAT. The dark sounds of later Depeche Mode gave the band their biggest hits. The band’s minor hit career in America started with 1984’s “People Are People,” the band’s first entry to Billboard’s Hot 100. The song became an anti-war Soviet-era anthem as well as an LGBTQ+ pride song. The band got darker on a single later in 1985 with “Master and Servant,” a song alluding to a BDSM relationship. After “People Are People” until 1990, Depeche Mode’s singles fared better on Billboard’s newly introduced Modern Rock chart, later renamed Alternative Airplay. It was the dark sound in the band’s music and lyrics that pushed them to stand out from contemporaries in synth-pop like Pet Shop Boys and Duran Duran. Depeche Mode took their place in a pantheon of mostly British bands that dominated the Modern Rock sound of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s before grunge and post-grunge took over in the early to mid-90s.

I’M NOT LOOKING FOR ABSOLUTION. Depeche Mode’s peak was in 1990 with the release of their seventh album, Violator, which brought the band back to the Top 40 with the album’s lead single “Personal Jesus,” released several months before the album’s release. The band then beat their peak of 13 for “People Are People” with the 1990 number 8 hit, “Enjoy the Silence.” The band’s next album, Songs of Faith and Devotion, released in 1993, also produced hits with the lead single “I Feel You” topped Alternative Airplay for three weeks, and today’s song “Walking in My Shoes” topped the chart for a week. The band’s impact on the Top 40 had started to wane with “Walking in My Shoes” only reaching number 69 and the lead singles from subsequent albums reaching only the lower rungs of the Top 40. Depeche Mode’s lyrics have been called blasphemous as the band often takes religious imagery to repurpose it for social and political messaging. But listening back to Depeche Mode, especially after hearing Anberlin’s cover of “Enjoy the Silence,” it seems that the tension between the religious and the secular is a major part of Anberlin’s lyrics. Whereas U2 may be called the band that brought faith mainstream, I think that Depeche Mode’s lyrics introduce a nuance that has us challenging our deep-seated biases.