Music For The Masses

For information on this album's singles, see the Singles section.
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This article is about the album. To view a list of its songs and B-sides, see Music For The Masses songs.

Music For The Masses
Album	Music For The Masses
By	Depeche Mode
Catalogue number	Stumm47 Stumm47 CDStumm47 CDStumm47 CDXStumm47 CDXStumm47 CStumm47 CStumm47 CStumm47 HMV1 Stumm 47 CDStumm47 Stumm47
Release date	27 September 1987
Recorded at	Guillaume Tell (Paris) Konk (London) Puk Studios, Denmark
Produced by	Depeche Mode Dave Bascombe
Engineered by	Dave Bascombe
Number of tracks	10

Music For The Masses is the sixth studio album by Depeche Mode. It was released on 27 September 1987 by Mute Records and was supported by the Music For The Masses tour.

Track list

1. Never Let Me Down Again
2. The Things You Said
3. Strangelove
4. Sacred
5. Little 15
6. Behind The Wheel
7. I Want You Now
8. To Have And To Hold
9. Nothing
10. Pimpf

For a full list of songs, singles, and B-sides produced for this album, see the list of Music For The Masses songs.

Singles

1. Strangelove - April 13, 1987
2. Never Let Me Down Again - August 24, 1987
3. Behind The Wheel - December 28, 1987
4. Little 15 - May 16, 1988

Quotes

Martin Gore: "I saw a record at a London record shop with really lousy music on it, some Shooby dooby stuff. It had the grandiose name 'Music for the Millions'. I liked it straight away. We were into it because it was such an arrogant title. By the way, the title is meant ironically. We absolutely do not consider our music to be music for the masses, even if it actually seems to resonate in some countries such as Germany where we have a mass of fans."

"The title's [...] a bit tongue-in-cheek, really. Everyone is telling us we should make more commercial music, so that's the reason we chose that title."

— Andrew Fletcher - Stripped: Depeche Mode - Jonathan Miller (2003)

Martin Gore: "[...] When we called [the] album 'Music For The Masses', we were accused of being patronising and arrogant. In fact it was a joke on the uncommerciality of it. It was anything but music for the masses!"

Alan Wilder: "There's much more humour than we're given credit for. Perhaps it's just that ours, or particularly Martin's is a little specialised."

— Alan Wilder, Martin L. Gore - NME, February 1990

Statistics

Album BPM range by song
Never Let Me Down Again 106
The Things You Said 110
Strangelove 118
Sacred 120
Little 15 108
Behind The Wheel 125
I Want You Now 103
To Have And To Hold 149
Nothing 107
Pimpf 114
Average: 116
BPM values are plotted from 1 to 184 BPM. In cases where a song features a change in tempo, the tempo at which the majority of the song plays takes precedence. Unless noted otherwise, BPMs are estimated values determined by Spotify's Audio Analysis algorithm and as such are not guaranteed to be 100% accurate.

Album live plays by song
Never Let Me Down Again 1076
The Things You Said 106
Strangelove 301
Sacred 101
Little 15 3
Behind The Wheel 627
I Want You Now 139
To Have And To Hold 0
Nothing 101
Pimpf 101
Average: 255.5
Song live play values are plotted from zero to 1,100. All values are determined by summing the number of times each song has been performed live by Depeche Mode per tour. These totals do not reflect live plays performed by individual members of Depeche Mode as part of solo projects, solo tours, or known one-off performances.

Trivia

• The total number of live song plays from Music For The Masses is 2555. This figure is found by summing the number of individual performances for each album track.

References

Depeche Mode studio albums 1981-1982: Speak & Spell • A Broken Frame 1983-1986: Construction Time Again • Some Great Reward • Black Celebration 1987-1993: Music For The Masses • Violator • Songs Of Faith And Devotion 1997-2001: Ultra • Exciter 2005-2013: Playing The Angel • Sounds Of The Universe • Delta Machine 2017-2023: Spirit • Memento Mori Recoil studio albums 1986-1988: 1 + 2 • Hydrology 1992-2000: Bloodline • Unsound Methods • Liquid 2007: SubHuman Dave Gahan studio albums 2003-2007: Paper Monsters • Hourglass 2012-2015: The Light The Dead See • Angels & Ghosts 2021: Imposter Martin Gore solo albums and extended plays 1989-2003: Counterfeit e.p. • Counterfeit² 2012-2015: Ssss • MG 2021: The Third Chimpanzee Official releases Studio albums • Live albums • Compilation albums • Video albums • Singles