Black Celebration is the fifth studio album by the English electronic music band Depeche Mode, released on 17 March 1986 by Mute Records in the UK and Sire Records in the US. Recorded in London and West Berlin, it was produced by Depeche Mode, Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones. At the prompting of Miller, the band recorded the album using the "live the album" ethos inspired by the film director Werner Herzog, which led to considerable tension between the band and both Miller and Jones, resulting in neither being involved in the production of subsequent Depeche Mode albums.

The album was promoted by the singles "Stripped", "A Question of Lust", and "A Question of Time". In the US, "But Not Tonight" was released as a single instead of "Stripped". In support of the album, Depeche Mode embarked on the five-month-long Black Celebration Tour across Europe, North America, and Japan, which ran from early to mid-1986.

Black Celebration is considered by critics as the start of a four album series of well-regarded Depeche Mode albums, continuing with Music for the Masses (1987), Violator (1990) and Songs of Faith and Devotion (1993). Three years after its release, Spin ranked it as the 15th-greatest album of all time, and the UK's Radio X in 2011 cited it as one of the most influential albums of the 1980s. Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor later cited Black Celebration as a source of inspiration for his album debut, Pretty Hate Machine (1989).

Background

After touring through July 1985 in support of their previous album Some Great Reward (1984), Depeche Mode released two compilation albums in late 1985, The Singles 81→85 in the UK in October, and Catching Up with Depeche Mode in the US in November. Both albums included two new tracks which were both issued as singles, "Shake the Disease" (single released April 1985) and "It's Called a Heart" (single released September 1985). On a personal level, singer Dave Gahan married his partner Jo Fox, songwriter Martin Gore was still living in West Berlin with his girlfriend Christina Friedrich, and Andy Fletcher and Alan Wilder had moved in with their girlfriends, Grainne Mullen and Jeri Young, respectively, in London. However, after their exhausting year of touring and recording, the band found themselves at odds when they reunited. Tensions within the band and their producer Daniel Miller had already come up during recording sessions earlier that year for "Shake the Disease". Said Gahan, "If we were ever going to split up the band it was at the end of 1985. We were really in a state of turmoil. Constant arguing. Very intense. We weren't really sure where to go [musically] after Some Great Reward, so we decided to slow things down. But it left us with too much time on our hands. So we spent most of our time arguing. Sometimes, it seems incredible that we came out of that period with the band and our sanity intact." The inter-personal conflict within what was normally a tight-knit group led Gore to hide away with a friend at a farm for a week, with Gore later saying "I freaked out. I had to go away for a few days." Ultimately, the band agreed to reconvene in London in November to try to record their new material.

Recording

Production

Depeche Mode entered Westside Studios in London in the first week of November 1985 to start recording their new album. In starting to work on the new album, producer Miller said that he "was a bit frustrated because [he] couldn't get the guys to think about working in different ways," and to that end, Miller asked the band to attend the studio every day to work on the production to "live the album", wanting "a kind of intensity". Miller was inspired by the history of German film director Werner Herzog, saying that Herzog had made historical films "and [the people involved in production of the movies] really lived the films, and it was a very intense way of working." The band agreed to this approach, and Gore moved back to London from West Germany, where he had been living since the Some Great Reward recording sessions of 1983–84.

thumb|left|A promotional image of Depeche Mode, released in late 1985 just before the band entered the studio to record Black Celebration|alt=A black and white square image of four young white men, seated and looking at the camera. All are wearing dark clothing, most leather, and one wears a hat and a long necklace. Their expressions are serious, almost brooding, and the only lightness to the picture is the hair of two of the young men which are bleached blonde.

Typical of Depeche Mode's previous few albums, Gore arrived at the sessions with demos of new songs for the album, and, determined to make their new album "a lot heavier, harder and darker [than their previous album]", brought in demos that were less structured and formal than he had in the past. Miller and the band's label, Mute Records, upon hearing the demos, were concerned about the morbid, slow demos, and worried that they lacked any radio-friendly singles. After a week-long standoff, Miller and the label relented, allowing the band to "make the record you want to make." This stand-off preceded a tense 120 days in the studio, with the band and producers working 14 hours a day to complete the album, with few days off. Years later, Miller remembered that the Black Celebration sessions "turned in a nightmare ... There was definitely tension in the studio" as a result of the "live the album" ethos of recording. where they had recorded and mixed parts of their previous two albums. In partially explaining the move back to Berlin, singer Dave Gahan said the reason was "the atmosphere. There are no distractions [here at Hansa] like in London. I can't work in England anymore."

Adding further tensions in the studio, Jones and Miller fretted over the album's final mix, taking three weeks to mix the album over and over, before the band finally staged an intervention to force a final mix. Andy Fletcher said that "We had a real mission to prove to people that electronic music was a valid type of music," noting that Depeche Mode often incorporated guitar into their songs, but typically subverted its sound to make it unrecognizable. Wilder said that with Black Celebration, the band was likely "alienating some of the teen market but gaining more respect [among the press]." or rituals of the Occult, but rather, it was meant to "[describe] the daily boredom of a dreary life without climaxes or hope for improvement." Said Gore, "Our songs from Black Celebration capture the idea: Make the most of what you have, and find consolation whereever you can."

Tour

The band continued to use backing tapes on tour, a trade-off the band chose to make because although it led to some inflexibility, it made the band sound good live. Wilder defended the decision to use backing tapes, saying "We do put on a good live performance. We're one of the most exciting bands around. First, we always get a good sound, because everything always goes into the PA system. Second, we have a lot of vocal harmonies, which make a very big vocal sound. And third, we take a lot of trouble over the stage set and a good light show." The set was designed to hide much of the band's equipment and allow for Gahan's dancing. Wilder elaborated that "the flooring is designed for Dave [Gahan] to be able to dance around without flipping over – we had problems with that on previous tours."

The Black Celebration Tour began with a UK leg, starting in Oxford, England in late March 1986 and finishing a month later in London. The set list was modified early in the leg, when lacklustre crowd reactions to "Here is the House" led it to be dropped in favor of "New Dress". A European leg continued from April through May, followed by a North American and Japanese leg in June and July that concluded with three shows in Japan.

Critical reception

Contemporaneous reviews for Black Celebration in the British press were mixed. Panning the album in Melody Maker, Steve Sutherland wrote that Depeche Mode came off as "pussycats desperate to appear perverted as an escape from the superficiality of teen stardom", while in Sounds, Kevin Murphy dismissed its songs as "harmless scenes of banality, with no twists and many happy endings." Writing for Smash Hits, Chris Heath was impressed by the album's "weirder" approach of mixing "dark, mysterious percussive" songs and "sweet, fragile and rather sinister ballads". Fletcher later recognised it as a "classic Depeche Mode fan favourite" among the band's albums in the EPK for their 1998 compilation The Singles 86>98, and said he found that "Black Celebration has got a collection of songs on there that's absolutely fantastic." Gore, also in 1998, said that the album marked a turning point for the band, saying "since the Black Celebration album we've started getting things right." Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails cited Black Celebration and its subsequent tour as an influence, saying that it helped inspire him to write the album Pretty Hate Machine (1989). Said Reznor, "DM was one of our favorite bands and the Black Celebration record took my love for them to a new level."

Track listing

2007 Collectors Edition CD + DVD

Personnel

Depeche Mode

  • Alan Wilder
  • Andrew Fletcher
  • David Gahan
  • Martin Gore

Technical

  • Depeche Mode – production
  • Gareth Jones – production
  • Daniel Miller – production
  • Richard Sullivan – engineering assistance
  • Peter Schmidt – engineering assistance
  • Tim Young – mastering
  • Dave Allen – recording on "Fly on the Windscreen – Final"
  • Phil Tennant – recording assistance on "Fly on the Windscreen – Final"

Artwork

  • Martyn Atkins – design
  • David A. Jones – design
  • Mark Higenbottam – design
  • Brian Griffin – photography
  • Stuart Graham – photography assistance

Charts

Weekly charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ 1986 weekly chart performance for Black Celebration

! scope="col"| Chart (1986)

! scope="col"| Peak<br />position

|-

! scope="row"| Australian Albums (Kent Music Report)

| 69

|-

|-

|-

|-

! scope="row"| European Albums (Music & Media)

| 5

|-

! scope="row"| Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)

| 17

|-

! scope="row"| French Albums (IFOP)

| 11

|-

|-

! scope="row"| Italian Albums (Musica e dischi)

| 9

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

! scope="row"| UK Independent Albums (MRIB)

| 1

|-

|}

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"

|+ 2013 weekly chart performance for Black Celebration

! scope="col"| Chart (2013)

! scope="col"| Peak<br />position

|-

|}

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"

|+ 2017 weekly chart performance for Black Celebration

! scope="col"| Chart (2017)

! scope="col"| Peak<br />position

|-

|}

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ 2025 weekly chart performance for Black Celebration

|-

! scope="col"| Chart (2025)

! scope="col"| Peak<br /> position

|-

! scope="row"| Greek Albums (IFPI)

| 44

|}

Year-end charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ Year-end chart performance for Black Celebration

! scope="col"| Chart (1986)

! scope="col"| Position

|-

! scope="row"| European Albums (Music & Media)

| 24

|-

! scope="row"| German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)

| 19

|-

! scope="row"| Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)

| 23

|}

Certifications

Notes

References

Works cited

  • Album information from the official Depeche Mode website
  • Official remaster info