Modern Rock Tracks No. 1s - Depeche Mode and "Enjoy The Silence"
Depeche Mode's percussive ode to the beauty of quiet moments tops the charts and stands as one of the best '80s '90s songs
Depeche Mode - “Enjoy The Silence”
Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 3 (April 21 - May 5, 1990)
Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:
Sinead O'Connor - “Nothing Compares 2 U” (4/21/90 - 5/5/90, 3 weeks)
What makes a great ‘80s song? I suppose it depends on the genre you’re using to define “the ‘80s,” but I suspect most music lovers will give you some amalgamation of the following artists: Prince, Michael Jackson, Hall & Oates, Guns N’ Roses, Def Leppard, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, George Michael, Police, Madonna, etc. There’s a sound, sort of a “you know it when you hear it” aspect to ‘80s music that generally defines the era. If you’re listening to, say, Dexy’s Midnight Runners or Tommy Tutone, you know you’re listening to an ‘80s song just as sure as you know a track from Creedence Clearwater Revival or the Beatles will be representative of the 1960s.
Of course, it’s all a construct of the mind. Humans tend to compartmentalize things by certain standards of time. We think in terms of time periods like years or decades and assign specific things to those broad categories, but usually it’s not 100 percent accurate. Mention 1970s music and you’re almost certainly going to talk about disco and the imperial phase of the Bee Gees and Donna Summer and Chic. But the truth is disco really only had a grip on the zeitgeist for, at most, about one-third of that decade. Album-oriented rock, singer-songwriter dominance and post-’60s introspective rock and R&B dominated the decade far longer than disco. The era of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones really didn’t start until 1964, at which point you have to ask why we don’t define the 1960s by what preceded them, chart-toppers like “Telstar” or Bert Kaempfert and his mad hits.
The lines especially get blurry around the time the decades shift from one into another, as bands who release albums early in a new decade tend to stay true to the style that made them popular in the preceding one. And here’s where things get difficult, because it’s easy to assign a song from the early months of one decade into a category that belongs in the preceding decade. You could argue that Beatles hits like “Let It Be” and “The Long And Winding Road,” both released in 1970, could be classified as ‘60s hits. You’d likely be forgiven for assigning Rihanna’s “Rude Boy” to the 2000s, since it hit #1 in the late spring of 2010 and is stylistically as close as anything else to the music that dominated the charts in 2009.
The point of this needlessly long tangential journey down a road full of pop hits is that for me, up until maybe the last 10 years or so, I was certain Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy The Silence” was an “‘80’s song.”
I can’t be the only one? Surely you all thought this was a song plucked right out of the new wave peak of the early to mid ‘80s, right? Everything about that style is laid out in full glory in “Enjoy The Silence”: percussive synth drums, droning keyboard riffs, laser beam sounds, smooth guitar accompaniment, haunting lyrics musing loudly about the power of silence, etc. This is an ‘80s song, one that I could easily classify as the best ‘80s song from the 1990s, or “best ‘80s ‘90s song.”
There might be others. You could make a case for a handful of ‘90s releases that meet this criteria. I’d be curious which ‘90s songs make the strongest case for being a misplaced and mistimed ‘80s hit. But when I think “Enjoy The Silence,” I just can’t imagine how it managed to break through the changes in alternative and pop music happening in the early ‘90s to stand out as a bona fide crossover hit, long after new wave acts crested in the mid ‘80s.
But Depeche Mode is a band that defied convention right from their start in the early 1980s and were able to pave a path all their own, one that saw them taste pop stardom early and then build upon that success to reach even wider audiences. Right from their first album in 1981, “Speak & Spell,” Depeche Mode rose to widespread acclaim in their native U.K. In fact, starting with “Speak & Spell” and continuing to the present day with their March 2023 release “Memento Mori,” every one of the band’s 15 studio albums has charted in the top 10 on the U.K. charts. Like a lot of bands I’ve discussed in this space, U.S. superstardom often came after a steady build across the Atlantic and a slow rollout to sizable pockets of alternative music fans in America.
What’s fascinating about the band is the strength of their catalog and its evolution over time. Take “Just Can’t Get Enough,” the second single off their first album. It charted at a respectable #8 on the British charts but didn’t even crack the Hot 100 in the U.S. Yet, to this day, it’s #2 on the band’s Spotify streaming totals, coming in at more than 338 million streams as of August 2023. Whereas “People Are People,” the band’s breakout hit in the U.S. in 1984, reached #13 on the Hot 100 and was their biggest American hit until “Enjoy The Silence,” but it barely cracks the top 10 in Spotify streams with 66 million.
Most of the band’s biggest hits in the 1980s routinely landed in the top 20 on the British charts but barely made any noise on the Hot 100. But then, with the release of “Violator” in February 1990, Depeche Mode finally found the right moment for their sound to break through to the masses. First single “Personal Jesus” is a stone-cold classic and yet, somehow, peaked at #3 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart behind Camper van Beethoven, which feels ridiculous. It stalled on the Hot 100 at #28 and seemed to indicate the band had reached its commercial peak.
But “Enjoy The Silence” took the world by storm, and finally landed the band in the top 10 on the U.S. pop charts with a #8 peak on the Hot 100. The song was a top-10 hit in multiple countries and, of course, topped the MRT chart for three weeks at a time when several different songs were playing musical chairs with the top spot.
The song is a killer right from the start, hitting you sonically left and right with that synthetic drum beat behind one-note flourishes of keyboard riffs and a guitar line that drives right into David Gahan’s low-key lyrics lamenting loudness. He makes a powerful case for love and passion not requiring any sound at all, clearly articulating his annoyance at the vocalization of any words, calling them “violence,” “crashing into my little world.” Words are “painful,” “piercing,” “meaningless,” “forgettable,” and “trivial,” myriad ways to describe something that takes away from the pleasure of feeling quiet emotions in the moment. It’s powerful stuff, a diatribe on silence performed by a band hitting you on so many musical levels that you have to wonder if the silence really is as good as Gahan is describing.
But he’s right about that feeling you get when you have someone in your arms, the world shut off around you, and just enjoying that satisfying moment in between the realities of life. Only in that silence does Gahan’s narrator find that true passion, and I think that’s something almost everyone can relate to and crave as boldly.
“Personal Jesus” is terrific, but “Enjoy The Silence” is Depeche Mode at their finest, an ode to a style of music that had its mainstream moment years before but came out for a final curtain call in the months before grunge would take over the alternative music landscape. With “Violator” dominating both the pop and alternative/modern rock charts at the time, fans and radio producers both became obsessed with the band and didn’t waste much time putting future singles into heavy rotation as well. Thus, it won’t be too much longer before this band makes a return appearance atop the MRT chart.
Rating: 10/10
Chart Check: A look at other notable MRT chart songs from this time period
There’s a lot of counter programming running adjacent to Depeche Mode during this time on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. We’ll hear mellow coffeehouse odes, guitar-rock distilled to its purest form, and the latest in what is becoming a dwindling list of They Might Be Giants tracks to chart.
“I Don’t Know Why I Love You” by The House Of Love: British rockers The House Of Love hit their commercial peak with this guitar-rock confection, peaking at #2 behind “Enjoy The Silence.” There’s not much I can add to this description other than to encourage you all to give it a listen, as it’s pretty solid and really could have slid into the top spot if not for Depeche Mode.
“Fools Gold” by Stone Roses: A funky breakbeat punctuates this Stone Roses track, making it a contender for the best “‘70s ‘90s track.” It’s tonally far removed from Depeche Mode and The House Of Love, but still fits seamlessly into the fabric of what alternative music was at the time, a hodgepodge of contrasting styles. This is the second-highest charting track from Stone Roses on the MRT chart, peaking at #5 behind “Enjoy The Silence.”
“Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning” by Cowboy Junkies: Coming off the relative success of their last album and hit single “Sweet Jane,” Cowboy Junkies returned to the upper reaches of the MRT chart with the lead single off their album “The Caution Horses.” Their smooth, harmonica-punctuated coffeehouse hit peaked at #11 on the MRT chart behind Depeche Mode, and it would become the last new track that charted in the top 20 for the band.
“Twisting” by They Might Be Giants: I’m running out of TMBG tracks to feature in this space, but I will do my best to make mention of each of them, especially when they’re as solid as “Twisting.” For me at least, this track belongs in the hall of fame for songs that are shorter than two minutes. John Linnell’s keyboards and John Flansburgh’s guitar go together brilliantly, and the harmonizing vocals throughout punctuate a song that’s pure fun from start to finish. And, of course, there’s that Young Fresh Fellows reference.