Happy Anniversary: Depeche Mode, Catching Up With Depeche Mode

29 years ago today, music fans in America were provided with the opportunity to find out what all the fuss was about with a certain synth-based band from Basildon.

Depeche Mode might’ve been formed in 1980 and released their first single (“Dreaming of Me”) and album (Speak & Spell) in 1981, but despite taking the British charts by storm virtually from the get-go, it wasn’t until the release of their 1984 single, “People are People,” that Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, Andy Fletcher, and Alan Wilder managed to start finding a foothold in America.

That’s right: poor old Vince Clarke would have to wait until joining forces with Andy Bell to form Erasure before he’d see his way into any US charts success.

With “People Are People” providing Depeche Mode with a full-fledged top-20 single (it made it to #13 on the Billboard Hot 100, in case you were wondering), the folks at Sire decided that maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to offer the band’s new fans a quick and easy education of what they’d missed when they weren’t paying attention during the preceding three years.

Well, most of it, anyway. If you go back and check out the band’s chart successes in the UK, you’ll notice that the single “Leave in Silence,” which hit #18 in 1982, didn’t make the cut, nor did “Get the Balance Right,” which hit #13 in ’83. On the other hand, it does have “Flexible,” which was previously only available as the B-side to “Shake the Disease,” and it also provided American listeners with “Fly on the Windscreen,” which had made its debut on the B-side of “It’s Called a Heart” (and was later reworked for inclusion on 1986’s Black Celebration album).

Of course, it’s not like the US really got something that the UK didn’t, since the band released a very similar – but not quite identical – compilation over yonder called The Singles 81→85, but let’s face it: we all know which country got the snappier title.