Black Celebration is the fifth studio album by English electronic music band Depeche Mode. It was released on 17 March 1986 by Mute Records. The album further cemented the darkening sound created by Alan Wilder, which the band later used for their subsequent albums Music for the Masses, Violator, and Songs of Faith and Devotion, a sound that was initially hinted towards on their albums Construction Time Again and Some Great Reward. Black Celebration reached number four on the UK Albums Chart, and has been cited as one of the most influential albums of the 1980s. To promote the album, the band embarked on the Black Celebration Tour. Three years after its release, Spin ranked it at number fifteen on its list of the "25 Greatest Albums of All Time".
Critical reception
Contemporary reviews for Black Celebration in the British press were mixed. Melody Makers Steve Sutherland lambasted the album and wrote that Depeche Mode came off as "pussycats desperate to appear perverted as an escape from the superficiality of teen stardom", and Sounds published a similar scathing review. While criticizing chief songwriter Martin Gore's "adolescent fragments of despair", Sean O'Hagan of NME nonetheless praised Black Celebrations "perfectly constructed jigsaw melodies" and concluded, "When the songs address topics other than the composer's state of mind – as on the evocative exploration of loneliness that is 'World Full of Nothing' – Depeche Mode sound like a lot more than just a high tech, low-life melodrama". Betty Page of Record Mirror felt that the band should be admired for their "refusal to follow anything but their own fashion" and "unswerving ability to come up with great, fresh melodies". Black Celebration has since been reappraised in retrospective reviews. In 2007, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone referred to the album as an "instant classic for the band's fans" that at the time of its release had seemingly been "utterly ignored by everybody else". Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails cited Black Celebration, and its subsequent tour, as an influence and said it helped inspire him to write Pretty Hate Machine.
Re-release
In 2007, Black Celebration was re-released with a bonus DVD. It was released on 20 March 2007 in the United States, on 26 March in the United Kingdom and on 2 April in the rest of Europe, as a part of the third wave of re-issues. The first CD was remastered and released on a CD/SACD hybrid. The bonus DVD includes the B-sides in addition to the singles and B-sides for "Shake the Disease" and "It's Called a Heart", two songs that were recorded shortly before the album and were released too early to be put on the album. There are also several live versions of some of the songs from Black Celebration. The album is released the way it was originally intended and ends with "New Dress". Like the other reissues, the DVD includes a documentary on the album. The title—The Songs Aren't Good Enough, There Aren't Any Singles and It'll Never Get Played on the Radio—is Gore paraphrasing Daniel Miller about his demos for Black Celebration in the film. The double-documentary discusses both The Singles 81→85 and Black Celebration, its more challenging commercial success and all five related singles. It also includes a plethora of behind-the-scenes footage of the making of Black Celebration and the ensuing tour. Highlights include the band meeting The Cure, and behind the scenes footage of several of the music videos. The documentary is nearly an hour long. The remastered album was released on vinyl on 2 April 2007 in Europe and on 11 September 2007 in the United States.
Track listing
2007 Collectors Edition CD + DVD
Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Black Celebration.
