Mike76

First of all, thank you for the overly generous votes.
Then I respond to Mommy'sLittleMonster:
"The poor and monotonous voice of English singers from the early '80s is one of the points of departure from black music." Right, one of the great innovations introduced by the New Wave was indeed in the singing, although I don’t entirely agree with the term "poor." As for the pleasant Howard, however, that remains my judgment; I don't find him a gifted singer, he seems to lack a very personal style and appears to be in constant difficulty when it comes to "shouting" a bit more.
When compared to some of the male voices of the era (Sylvian, Foxx, Lydon), he loses mercilessly to all in terms of power and personality, perhaps only rivaling Gary Numan. I must say, however, that I have never listened to "Spiral Scratch" by the Buzzcocks; I’ll look for it to form a new opinion.

Yes, Pretazzo. Probably when the review was published, users were too busy reading the fortieth review about Queen....

Beautiful review/critique. The only thing I disagree with is when you talk about a "musical evolution" that has never existed for this band.

I fully agree. Bad album, end of story.

Well, I remember the 5 consecutive weeks of "I Feel You" at number one on the European Top 20, which consequently was played a lot, as they say in jargon, "in heavy rotation." And "Condemnation" also climbed high in the charts. It seems to me that all four singles were played plenty on MTV without censorship. As for "People Are People," it could have been recorded on the moon for all I care; the problem is that it has such a frivolous chorus that even Righeira couldn't pull it off... The fact that it adopts a home-grown industrial sound just makes it even more paradoxical, in my view. I repeat, "Precious" is a thousand times better. At least for me. Whether they call themselves "commercial" or "alternative" doesn't matter much to me; in my opinion, Depeche are still one of the greatest bands of the last thirty years, I want to make that clear.

Tear up the bodywork, it would be great if you started writing in prose, mainly for poor mortals like me who only have a diploma in accounting. Anyway, very interesting suggestion, the New Japan catalog from Tzadik is definitely a guarantee.

Moral: "Not everything that airs on MTV is necessarily crap."

"Because Mode, unfortunately, have become just another little group like many others, slaves to marketing and commercial viability." "Depeche, who have also fallen prey to MTV and various networks, awards, and various bullshit." But look, the Depeche have always been a trendy and glamorous pop group; this album, for example, was heavily pushed by MTV at the time. You can tell me that you don’t like the last two albums, but not because they are more 'commercial' than the others. For me, anyway, I'd take a 'Dream On' or a 'Precious' a thousand times over garbage like 'The Meaning Of Love' or 'People Are People.' I'm certainly not nostalgic.

Ahem... I think you have made a mistake with the grades then.

@Wallace: "The Finnish lady is not being contradictory. She is probably Christian as well. She simply finds it strange that a secular state imposes the symbol of only one religion in public spaces." And for the same reason, she should find it strange that her country "imposes" the symbol of only one religion in the national flag. Instead, she won't because the national flag is part of her country's cultural heritage, just as the crucifix is part of our customs and traditions. Clearly, customs and traditions can change over time, but through the will of the people, not through the singular initiative of an Islamic fundamentalist or an ultra-radical secularist who, moreover, contradict themselves.