this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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As much as I want TiK ToK by Kesha to be a recognizable tune in half a millenia I know that's not happening. Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode is one of the most covered songs of the past 50 years so that very well may become immortalized through diffusion alone. There's a couple dozen jazz standards that could have that kind of staying power as well, especially considering their ubiquity in performance repitoires and books of sheet music.
Bored music teacher in 2200: "and here children, we find the most important contributions to late 20th centure music: a phonograph of Depeche Mode's Violator."
I can only hope, deep into the future, some dork leans toward his friend and mutters "101 was better."
Anyone who would say that would say Black Celebration instead.
I would've said Songs Of Faith And Devotion, but a short name made a better gag, and I could not bring myself to say Ultra.
And seriously, 101 fucking rules. It's an energetic best-of before they asked themselves what made them special and stripped back everything for the iconoclastic rose album everyone knows them for. Which is okay.
On reflection, far from sober, it is surprising the Deftones have never covered "In Your Room."
Funny. Seems like you see Violator as the start of a new era for them, and I see it as the end of the classic era. There are isolated songs I like after Violator, but no whole albums. (For reference, SoFaD was their newest album when I started listening, and I got it as the same time as Violator.)
Violator is a band asking themselves what they're about and finding a crystal clear answer. The result is deliberately transitional. In going to the extremes, in excising everything that is not strictly necessary, they built a framework for a sound that is distinctly their own, without being more of what they'd already done.
Songs Of Faith And Devotion is bombastic, but all its power is built on that same crisp restraint. Especially in the 90s - it would have been easy to be louder and busier just by adding a little distortion, a little fuzz, a little taste of metal or grunge. Instead they stuck with clean synths and tasteful reverb, but made them fucking hit. (By contrast, see Playing The Angel. Or don't.)
Ultra does the opposite trick, applying that sparse soundscape to more-general instrumentation. It kinda works. Exciter does a better job of it, but still stumbles on tracks like "Dead Of Night" and "Comatose." Good demos! How long until they're complete? Oh. ("Freelove" nearly makes up for all of it.)
Everything after that... look, I actually like Playing The Angel, but I'm the kind of mutant who sincerely argues that Violator was merely okay. And even I can't find any love for Delta Machine.
All their work leading up to Violator was much more organic than how they made Violator. Their masterpiece, in the sense of getting their shit together and being taken seriously, was Construction Time Again, with "Everything Counts" as a tentpole. Some Great Reward was Gore going 'oh we can get real weird with this, huh' and leaning way the hell into the kink and the darkness, god bless him. Black Celebration was the peak of that arc.
Music For The Masses never rises to quite the same level, but in that album you can see the transition forming. "Behind The Wheel" is probably the crescendo of their old sound. Y'know, synthpop where someone's credited for playing the trash can. And then immediately there's "To Have And To Hold," which is maybe one degree too loose for Violator. It is emblematic of the sound they wanted.
I agree with you. To me, Violator was the last album of the 2nd generation of their sound, the first being a lot more New Wave. Although, I do think the shift from New Wave to the more techno industrial 2nd era was more gradual.
I heard it on the radio recently and they censored the beginning:
Wake up in the morning feeling like [redacted]
I heard a live performance where the line was changed to:
??????? Why
P Diddy/Sean Combs has a lot of ongoing allegations right now