“Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode, Monday December 4, 2023

The ‘90s in rock music started quietly. Hair metal was still around, but vibey New Wave tracks had gained traction in the late ‘80s. It was an eclectic time without a clear direction for a musical style. Of course that all changed in the fall of 1991 when Nirvana burst onto the scene and Alternative and mainstream rock listeners determined that grunge would be the collective musical trend. Just as disco didn't die in 1979, the New Romantics sound of the late ‘80s carried over into the early ‘90s. In fact, in the early ‘90s, New Order, The Smiths’ Morrisey, and Depeche Mode enjoyed their peak success. For Depeche Mode, that success came from a dark pop song, which crossed the Alternative Rock band over to the pop charts with the single from their seventh album Violator, “Enjoy the Silence.”

ALL I EVER WANTED, ALL I EVER NEEDED IS HERE IN MY ARMS. Produced by the now legendary Mark Ellis, better known as Flood, Violator was years of dark electronica in the making. Flood’s first credits begin as an assistant engineer in 1981 on New Order’s first record, Movement. By 1983 he engineered Ministry’s debut With Sympathy.  In 1985, Flood produced two singles for the synth-pop group Erasure, whose Vince Clarke had been the lead vocalist of Depeche Mode before leaving and being replaced by Dave Gahan. Flood began working with Depeche Mode in 1985 as an engineer on several of their singles. Then in 1987, he worked as the engineer on the Brian Eno-produced U2 classic The Joshua Tree. Flood closed out the ‘80s, producing co-producing Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine with Trent Reznor. After Depeche Mode’s seventh album, Flood went on to be a massive producer in the ‘90s and ‘00s, producing albums such as The Downward Spiral, U2’s Zooropa, The Killers’ Sam’s Town, and Thirty Seconds to Mars’ This Is War.

WORDS ARE VERY UNNECESSARY.“Enjoy the Silence” reached number 8 on Billboard’s Hot 100, the highest-charting pop song of Depeche Mode. The song focuses on the unspoken rather than the explicitly stated. Like yesterday’s song, “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out,” “Enjoy the Silence” is open to multiple interpretations. What vows is the speaker speaking about? And what “is here in [his] arms”? Another similarity with yesterday’s song besides both groups’ queer-coded associations is that Anberlin also covered “Enjoy the Silence.” The band recorded a cover of songs that influenced them for their first four records, starting with The Cure’s “Lovesong” on Blueprints for the Black Market. In the recording sessions for their sophomore record, Never Take Friendship Personal, the band recorded “Enjoy the Silence” but left it off the record because they had already released a cover on their first album. Lead singer Stephen Christian said that they didn’t want to be the band that had a cover on every album. The band did end up releasing the track as part of the 2006 compilation Punk Goes ‘90s. The theme of silence appears on Anberlin’s third record, Cities on the fourth track, “A Whisper & a Clamour,” the bridge of which gives an emotional answer to the verse and the Psalm 47:1 reference: “It’s not the lies that you say, but what the silence will scream.” Of course, Anberlin covered “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” along with the When In Rome hit “Promise” during the Cities sessions, and the band released a cover of New Order’s “True Faith” on the deluxe edition of their fourth album, New Surrender. Anberlin was an example of a band that displayed their New Romantic influences for everyone to see, but many other bands in the ‘00s emo scene cited the ‘80s melancholy rockers as influences. It took me a while to get into my favorite bands’ influences, but with more exposure to them, I might think that the original might be better in many cases. But certainly, the recording technology improved in the ‘00s.

Read “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode on Genius.