DEPECHE MODE - STRANGELOVE

Released : April 27, 1987

Charted:  UK: #16  US: #50 

"Strangelove" is a song released as the lead single from their 1987 sixth studio album, “Music for the Masses”. It reached #76 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was the first of nine number ones on the US Hot Dance Club Play chart, where it stayed for three weeks at the top. t was remixed by production team Bomb the Bass  and released again as a single in the US, known informally as "Strangelove '88", this time reaching number 50 on the Hot 100.

Depeche Mode remixed “Strangelove” after releasing it as a single because they deemed it too cluttered and happy to fit in on “Music For The Masses”. But the first version is still better. A svelte new wave megahit, it wastes no time jumping into not one but two of the band’s greatest melodies, with the verses and choruses somehow being equally infectious. Even the bridge is so catchy that, for lesser bands, it could be the hook of the biggest song of their lives. Long story short: this is unforgettable pop condensed into its purest possible strain.

Gore said: "I really like this track and think it's one of our poppiest singles. Somehow I don't know if it still works for me... occasionally in our career we've stepped on the wrong side of commerciality, not very often , and 'Strangelove' is just on the right side. It's like "Enjoy The Silence", it's just on the right side of commerciality. There's a line and if you step over it too far it becomes bland pop music."

When Depeche Mode was interviewed about the songs on the '101' CD for the April 1989 issue of French magazine 'Best', Alan Wilder said: "The only thing that comes to mind about 'Strangelove' is the amount of time we spent on recording it and the discussions it caused. I can't even say how many times we had to redo it. We had to change the bass line at least a hundred times. We also had a lot of percussion that we ended up removing. In fact, the problem was that we decided it would become a single before even recording it and that complicated things. We wanted to do it well, and all that for a result which, in my opinion, is not excellent. The live version is much more satisfying."