Depeche Mode
Stripped

THE REVIEW

"Stripped" is not only the masterpiece of the album it belongs to, but indeed the masterpiece of their career during the '80s decade.

Track number 7 from "Black Celebration" is truly a gem. The song has a musicality that feels epic, a rather dark arrangement, an oneiric text, and a smoky and claustrophobic atmosphere. On a superficial reading, the lyrics might seem like a classic beautiful love song, but in reality, it is an anti-materialistic anthem, a hymn to what is true and pure in a world devoted to materialism.
The sense of alienation from reality is very strong. The speaker asks the beloved to escape with them to a world far from today's civilization, a world that is likely only the fruit of their imagination. Emblematic, in this regard, is the phrase from the song's chorus: "Let me see you stripped down to the bone", a phrase recited in an imaginary context composed of vast meadows, trees, rivers, and everything related to nature and its wonders, inevitably recalling the biblical glories of the Garden of Eden, alluding to purity, innocence, well-being, peace, and anything that is part of moral integrity and the satisfaction of the soul.

Musically, the track, as is traditional with the band, is arranged with electronic music, which helps confer a very suggestive atmosphere. The piece is rich with analog synths and industrial trademark sounds that contribute to giving the piece a sense of a claustrophobic shroud, thus describing the metropolitan discomfort.

If to this day it is one of the most appreciated songs by fans, and not coincidentally Depeche Mode includes it in the setlist of the second leg of the Touring the Angel, there must be a reason. The live version re-proposed in the last tour is astounding. The introduction is a true musical "mass." The sampling of a car ignition and its distressing pulsating engine opens the piece, with dark descending chords executed and simplified by a very black synth line imposing themselves before accompanying an epic, sumptuous, and melancholic melody. The audience is in a frenzy in a context of spiritual alchemy with the band, until Dave Gahan will break the ethereal introduction by reciting the first words of the song...

Come with me
Into the trees...