Playing The Angel

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 Playing The Angel songs.

Playing The Angel
Album	Playing The Angel
By	Depeche Mode
Catalogue number	CDStumm260 No Cat # No Cat # Stumm260
Release date	17 October 2005
Recorded	January–July 2005
Recorded at	Sound Design (Santa Barbara) Stratosphere Sound (New York City) Whitfield Street (London)
Produced by	Ben Hillier
Engineered by	Richard Morris
Number of tracks	12

Playing The Angel is the eleventh studio album by Depeche Mode. It was released in the United Kingdom on 17 October 2005 by Mute Records and was supported by the Touring The Angel tour.

Mastering

The Compact Disc release of Playing The Angel is often described as a victim of the loudness war, which is a trend of increasing audio levels in recorded music.

See more: Playing The Angel mastering analysis

Track list

1. A Pain That I'm Used To
2. John The Revelator
3. Suffer Well
4. The Sinner In Me
5. Precious
6. Macro
7. I Want It All
8. Nothing's Impossible
9. Introspectre
10. Damaged People
11. Lilian
12. The Darkest Star

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

Singles

1. Precious – 3 October 2005
2. A Pain That I'm Used To – 9 December 2005
3. Suffer Well – 20 March 2006
4. John The Revelator / Lilian – 4 June 2006

Statistics

Album BPM range by song
A Pain That I'm Used To 108
John The Revelator 130
Suffer Well 131
The Sinner In Me 169
Precious 104
Macro 91
I Want It All 76
Nothing's Impossible 110
Introspectre 74
Damaged People 144
Lilian 130
The Darkest Star 164
Average: 119.25
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
A Pain That I'm Used To 482
John The Revelator 225
Suffer Well 124
The Sinner In Me 82
Precious 518
Macro 26
I Want It All 78
Nothing's Impossible 31
Introspectre 0
Damaged People 51
Lilian 0
The Darkest Star 0
Average: 134.75
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 Playing The Angel is 1617. This figure is found by summing the number of individual performances for each album track.

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