I Said I'd Write A Ballot, But I Never Got The Time -- ILM Artist Poll #18 -- DEPECHE MODE (voting thread)

The song list above is pretty much incomplete I think it ignores pretty much all their discography Exciter onwards.

There's some memorable singles in their later material (Freelove, Dream On, John the Revelator, Pain that I'm Used to, Precious).

From Violator I'm picking two non-singles. Sweetest Perfection and Waiting for the Night, I don't know how popular they are amongst fans but they are definitely my favorite cuts from the album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyLmV1yQJFg&feature=related

LIKE A HALO IN REVFERRRRRSE

People of ILX, please spare a thought for this "should have been THE A-side" gem...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss0ou03e9lQ

the despised "But Not Tonight."

what?!?!?! this is going to be my #1. I thought everyone loved that song, even if the band themselves consider it a throwaway.

― crüt, Saturday, April 21, 2012 9:03 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Um, yeah mine too.

BNT is amazing. Acutally Crut probably could have guessed that would be my #1.

I listened to But Not Tonight so much my sophomore year in college that my then boyfriend finally asked me to layoff it for a while because he couldn't handle it anymore. It's near perfect imo. It makes me feel, yo.

I'm pretty excited for this now. Wait - is this like the movie ones where we nominate songs here?

no Yazoo, no Erasure

hmpf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depeche_mode_discography

this is not all listed in one place but is going to be more complete than the list linked in the first post

also here are some possibly-less-obvious songs I hope people are considering because they're fantastic:

"Tora! Tora! Tora!"
"Ice Machine"
"Pipeline"
"Shame"
"Lie To Me"
"Stories Of Old"
"Here Is the House"
"World Full of Nothing"
"The Things You Said"
"To Have and to Hold"
"Sea of Sin"
"Happiest Girl"
"Higher Love"
"Useless"
"Shine"
"Freelove"
"The Sinner in Me"
"Macro"
"I Want It All"
"The Darkest Star"
"In Chains"
"Hole to Feed"
"Corrupt"

I voted for at least one of those, which is one of my all-time Depeche Mode favourites.

man, 20 songs is really too few IMO

I feel like I'm picking my favorite twenty children

"Sea of Sin"

Will be somewhere between #2-#5 on my ballot.

I think I'll have three of those. Slightly disappointed to find that I think the best tracks are mostly the singles though.

holy shit I am reminding myself of "Shake the Disease"

this is fucking impossible

Shake the disease is great.

My list prob won't have anything post 1993 or so on it.

No! They were the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world there for a bit.

At least two songs from the 00s will be on my ballot (Martyr and John the Revelator).

"In Chains" is really, really, really great, as is "The Darkest Star"

I listened to But Not Tonight so much my sophomore year in college that my then boyfriend finally asked me to layoff it for a while because he couldn't handle it anymore. It's near perfect imo. It makes me feel, yo.

YES. The segue from the verses to "I haven't felt so alliiive. In years" is my favorite in the Depeche canon.

"But Not Tonight" really is kinda the last 'light' Depeche song I can think of, IE something that captures the breezier feeling of their earliest singles. Nothing else after that is anywhere near as giddy, for lack of a better term.

"Pleasure, Little Treasure"?

gah I have 19 spots taken and 10 more songs I want to vote for

xpost -- a little too harsh lyrically, I'd say.

holy shit I am reminding myself of "Shake the Disease"

this is fucking impossible

― I need new, hip khakis (DJP), Monday, April 23, 2012 6:18 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

An easy inclusion on my ballot, that one! :D

would it be silly to vote for both "Stripped" and "Breathing In Fumes"?

Can I give all my votes to "Shake The Disease"?

The uh bit in the song that goes "you know how hard is for me to shake the disease" sends chills down my spine - Dan, is there a really obvious name for the vocal technique they employ here?

I don't know if there is a specific term for that vocal technique. Most people I know would describe that line as "flipping into head voice".

Most singers have three separate registers where they can sing; chest voice is low to medium range (think most of Dave's DM vocals), head voice is high but still full voice (think the held "yooooooooou" in "Precious"), and falsetto or whisper voice is basically half-voiced super high (the first "I know" in "In Chains"). Where those register breaks are varies from person to person; people with a higher register break between chest and head voice are considered to be tenors (men) or sopranos (women) while people with lower register breaks are baritones/basses (men) or mezzo-sopranos/altos (women). (I'm leaving out the whole thing of men singing in women's ranges as countertenors because that's confusing.) Dave Gahan is a baritone; that line is him doing a big leap up from his chest voice into his head voice, which pushes his comfortable vocal range right on the text "hard it is for me". The strain, while controlled, adds an extra emotional dimension to the delivery of the text.

the idea of even making this list is making me all sorts of O_O

Alfred gets it.

Thanks for that explanation Dan. It's absurd how little I know about singing.

my "But Not Tonight" is "Somebody"

Somebody is just a teensy bit too schmaltzy for me. That said, I still love it a lot.

(ps - it is great for the purpose you used it for tho iirc)

"But Not Tonight" really is kinda the last 'light' Depeche song I can think of, IE something that captures the breezier feeling of their earliest singles. Nothing else after that is anywhere near as giddy, for lack of a better term.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, April 23, 2012 6:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When I heard 'Lilian' from Playing The Angel for the first time, it came across as poppy in a way that Depeche hadn't been for years. I always thought it could have gone on one of Depeche's earlier albums. It's certainly not as 'light' as 'But Not Tonight', though, with it's 'pain and misery' lyric and everything.

I really don't know what to do with Enjoy The Silence. I love it so dearly, it's one of the rare elite tracks I'd've'd no hesitation at calling best-tune-ever at some point in life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Q-wq_YRlM

This is just about my favourite clip ever. Dave is having such a good time! I once bought a white vest purely so I could strut about at the top of our stairs, emulating his stagecraft here. Also, I'd forgotten until tonight but when I was in charge of a society at University I designed its official letterhead round a screengrab of Dave-as-Canute from the video.

And yet ... I don't think it'd be my listen of choice today, so it wouldn't be my no.1. In which case giving it a minor placing feels so wrong. I may have to exclude it entirely and hope others pick up the slack.

surprisingly, "Enjoy The Silence" and "Personal Jesus" are not candidates for my ballot (neither are "People Are People" or "Blasphemous Rumours")

however, "The Things You Said", "World Full Of Nothing", "Shine" and "Stories of Old" are

It's not my place to tell you how to arrange your ballot, but that logic is bonkers.

eh, not really; the only one of those Big Four I would really consider is "Personal Jesus", which I'm kind of tired of

the other four, OTOH, are all personal favorites that were instant loves from the first time I heard them that I played just as often as the Big Four, only I haven't gotten tired of them

Sorry, I was referring to ismael's post.

that famous ten-minute mix of "Never Let Me Down" will make my ballot -- a better car song than "Route 66."

Sorry, I was referring to ismael's post.

oh lol

in that case: OTM, vote for your favorites IMO

ha, fair enough - bonkers logic is the lifeblood of these things imo

btw PAIN
WILL YOU RETURN IT
I WON'T SAY IT AGAIN

Dan waht? You are excluding some stone cold classics.

you're talking about a band with something like 75+ stone-cold classics!

I mean not that they'll need your vote but still.

right now I have 19 songs on my ballot:

9 from the 80s
4 from the 90s
6 from the 00s

A Broken Frame and Ultra are the only albums completely unrepresented

as long as "Pimpf" is on your ballot all's right with the world

oh dear

My major issue with their later albums isn't the music so much as the lyrical tail-chasing.

I don't really see their later lyrics as being demonstrably worse as their earlier lyrics.

I mean, we're talking about a band who, in the smack middle of their artistic peak, released a single that opens with the lyric "There's something beating here inside my body and it's called a heart"

that's not a bad lyric in itself

I voted for at least five post-93 tracks

well then how about "I take pictures/Photographic pictures"?

Even allowing for the fact that most lyrics scan as dumb when you remove them from the context of the song, Depeche Mode still has some remarkably stupid ones scattered all throughout their career. I still love the band, but come on.

oh they're totally dumb. the "photographic" lyric is a better example.

Oh yeah, of course they were often dumb but they were dumb in lots of different directions. The range of themes on Construction through Masses is impressive, even when they got it catastrophically wrong. The later lyrics are oppressively competent, dwelling on the same basket of themes. Before Violator DM felt like a band trying to work out what they were doing, experimenting furiously en route. After Violator they felt like they'd decided on their sound and themes and have spent the last 20 years gently tweaking them - a rockier one, a quieter one, a darker one. SOFAD was the last significant development in their sound and songwriting imo, much though I enjoy parts of the subsequent albums.

ok threw one together, fuck yeah "Stjarna"

What is the stupidest Depeche Mode song?

i voted!

Sent!

CRUTIS I just sent to your hotmail!!!

Errr I mean gmail.

Oh and the poll-specific one I now see we were meant to send to in the first place.

If we ever do a New Order poll I wonder how many participants would consider "Regret" or "Crystal" post-peak.

i'm set up to do New Order poll at number 37

VOTED

poll is closed. will try to get results thread started by Thursday afternoon.