Flashback Friday: Depeche Mode ‘Enjoy The Silence’

It's a B10.7 Flashback Friday for March 28th, on a Spring Break week in Tuscaloosa. Those of us who didn't make it to the beach this week, sure do get the chance to enjoy the relative silence of the streets, while so many are out of town. Enjoy the silence while you can, wait, there's the spotlight song for this week.

The year is 1990 and Depeche Mode shot up the Billboard chart with 'Enjoy The Silence,' off the album Violator. It remains this English synthpop/new wave band's highest charting and most successful song.

Rolling Stone's biography for Depeche Mode includes these highlights:

Depeche Mode were the quintessential Eighties techno-pop band, parlaying a fascination with synthesizers into huge success on the British charts (where its albums consistently went Top 10) and eventually on the U.S. pop chart. Whereas a more traditional four-piece rock band might feature three members playing instruments and the fourth singing and perhaps playing guitar or bass, the lineup of this British group — whose name was inspired by a French fashion magazine — was described like this in a 1993 press release: "Dave (Gahan) is the singer, Martin (Gore) the songwriter, Alan (Wilder) the musician, and Andrew (Fletcher) the coordinator."

Depeche Mode's stark, synthetic sound and moody, provocative lyrics buck classic pop convention, to the extent that techno music innovators in Detroit and London regularly cite the band as a major inspiration. But for decades now, Depeche Mode also inspired countless alternative rock, indie, and even metal bands — possibly because the hooks that distinguish their most popular songs are among their era's most ingratiating. For a time, though, the group shared an unfortunate trait with numerous more conventional rock bands: a troubled, drug-addicted lead singer.

Here's the video for the song:

Depeche Mode 'Enjoy The Silence'

Listen to B101.7 Friday at 5pm for the Flashback Friday Spotlight with Greg Thomas. Get more flashbacks with the B101.7 Saturday Night Party, 8pm-1am, with Louie Linguini.