Another Top 10 Request is here – this one’s for you, Angelica. This time for Depeche Mode. This is another request that I was surprised I’d not done yet (closest was a Top 5 Depeche Mode Songs Post done in 2013). I’m excited to be getting requests for Lists I’ve not yet done yet. It is fun, and challenging (very), to spend time with a favorite Artist or Band of mine and come up with 10 Favorite Songs. Depeche Mode has been in my life since about 1984 when I bought their Album Some Great Reward, and they’ve stayed in my life since then. So, I’m ready for this, if not a little anxious at trying to narrow down only 10. But, one must stick with the constraints of the Top 10, right? The struggle is part of the fun.

As I mentioned above, Some Great Reward was my gateway into Depeche Mode addiction. It was the Band’s fourth studio Album and was filled with what seemed like a Greatest Hits Album. Every Song felt like a Hit. From there I dove into their earlier releases and bought up every subsequent Album that came out after. I always had at least one of their Cassettes in my first car, and many of their Songs wound up on many a Mix Tape.

Depeche Mode is one of the bands that is immediately wrapped up in memories of my adolescence, of stacks of vinyl albums and cassettes tossing around in my backpack, mix tapes made with care, and falling in unrequited love with that boy I could never have. It is reminiscent of that kind of youthful energy that burned through me and persisted despite the darkness I was growing up within.

They came with me, their Music, carried along in concert tickets and music played out of my first car’s speakers, and late nights in Hollywood clubs when I would dance next to some of the band’s members, seeing them as not so different, and as just as lost, as I was. We knew some of the same people, we did some of the same drugs, we hid in some of the same shadows.

I’ve seen them live twice (once at the infamous Rose Bowl show). I wish I’d seen them during their last tour.

Their music was there, too, when I made an error in judgment, falling into the arms of someone who did not belong to me, believing in all his lies even though I deep down I knew they were lies. He played their songs non-stop when we were together, their lyrics becoming interchangeable with his lies, as he held me close and whispered words of love, then left me to be with someone else, whispering the same words, the same lies. He took their music with him when she and I confronted him, half-drunk, at a New Year’s Eve party. She and I stayed, he left, and so did the songs.

Depeche Mode and I only broke up for a short while after that. An unfortunate case of a boy ruining a band, albeit only temporarily. I rarely think of the connection anymore except when one particular Song plays. That song will most definitely not be on the Top 10 list below.

But, there were so much more to choose from. This list was tough to narrow down, and there is a stack of Songs that I am mourning a little for being left out. But, these 10 are the ones that mean the most to me, the ones with the biggest memories and connections, the ones I still Turn Up Loud and Sing-A-Long to.

1. “But Not Tonight”
from the Album, Black Celebration (1986)

2. “It Doesn’t Matter”
from the Album, Some Great Reward (1984)

3. “Shake the Disease”
from the Album, Catching Up with Depeche Mode (1985)

4. “A Question of Lust”
from the Album, Black Celebration (1986)

5. “See You”
from the Album, A Broken Frame (1982)

6. “Policy of Truth”
from the Album, Violator (1990)

7. “Everything Counts”
from the Album, Construction Time Again (1983)

8. “Somebody”
from the Album, Some Great Reward (1984)

9. “Enjoy the Silence”
from the Album, Violator (1990)

10. “Stripped”
from the Album, Black Celebration (1986)