Sire/Reprise 45243
Producers: Depeche Mode & Flood
Track listing: I Feel You / Walking in My Shoes / Condemnation Mercy in You / Judas / In Your Room / Get Right with Me / Rush / One Caress / Higher Love
April 10, 1993
1week
“When you haven’t released a record in three years, you don’t know if fans are still there,” says Depeche Mode’s Andrew Fletcher. If the British band had any doubts, those misgivings disappeared the week after their tenth album was released, when Songs of Faith and Devotion entered The Billboard 200 at Number One.
The chart-topping entry might have come as a surprise to the band and some music industry observers, but over the years Depeche Mode had become a textbook example of how an alternative act can grow from cult status to mass success. The band had steadily built a larger audience with each album release and subsequent tour, culminating with 1990’s Violator. That album, which included the band’s first top 10 single, “Enjoy the Silence,” climbed to number seven on the album chart, sold more than two million units, and primed the pump for Songs.
Recording in a series of six-week stints in Madrid and Hamburg in early 1992, Depeche Mode — which also includes lead vocalist David Gahan, and multi-instrumentalists Martin Gore and Alan Wilder — were quite aware that the expectations for Songs would be high. “We were very conscious of the fact that the last album had done so well,” Fletcher says. “So there was a bit of pressure on us initially. But we wanted to make an album that sounded different. We really didn’t want to make Violator 2, and I think we achieved that.”
The band’s intentions were made quite clear on the album’s opening track and first single, “I Feel You,” which featured a blistering metallic guitar sound rather than the bouncy techno-pop that had become Depeche Mode’s trademark. “Since we had been away for so long we wanted to come back with a track that sort of created an impression,” Fletcher says. “People react to that track. They may not like it or they may love it. It makes a statement … If we’d released a more commercial track first, there is a danger that people might say, ‘Oh, here they are again with the same old stuff.'”
Although top 40 radio programmers didn’t react positively to the track, the single, which peaked at number 37, served its purpose: It showed that Depeche Mode was continuing to evolve. “That’s what makes the fans go out and buy the record in the first week,” Fletcher says. “Because they are so curious as to what we might come up with next.”
Songs also offered other surprises. Gahan was listening to a lot of gospel music prior to recording the album, and that influence can be heard on various tracks, including “Get Right With Me,” which features a choir. Another track, “One Caress,” includes a string section. “That was probably the most exciting part of the whole album,” Fletcher says. “Martin sang along live to the string section. It was all done in three hours. It was all very emotional.”
THE TOP FIVE
Week of April 10, 1993
1 . Songs of Faith and Devotion, Depeche Mode
2. The Bodyguard, Soundtrack
3. Breathless, Kenny G
4. Unplugged, Eric Clapton
5. Ten Summoner’s Tales, Sting