On this day 40 years ago, Depeche Mode released their dark and brooding album Black Celebration, making today a world holiday for goths—or anyone with an edgy streak, really. Sonically, the album is clanging and industrial, representative of the band’s synth-pop style; listening to it, one imagines oneself in a dark factory or warehouse, beholden to metallic echoes. Lyrically, however, the album is akin to a sad Romantic-era poet dying of Tuberculosis (John Keats comes to mind, although I have to admit it leans more Shelley-esque).
One might think these styles—menacing synths and Romantic existentialism—would not go together, although I would argue that the Romantic poets were the original goths. Still, that’s a story for another time. The point is, Romantic poetry is heavily existential, foreboding, and apocalyptic (see Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” as an example), and Martin Gore’s songwriting carries that tradition into the synthetic age. Black Celebration speaks of love in a time of crisis, of desire persisting despite blackened skies and death on the horizon.
In our modern era, flamed by climate crisis and increasing political unrest, this album hits a different nerve. In 1986, the threat of nuclear annihilation, fueled by the Cold War, was obviously in the zeitgeist for the band’s fifth album; however, these themes of apocalypse and destruction feel singular, more pressing, more insistent now, perhaps, than 40 years ago. So, the question remains: what can we learn from Black Celebration today? What can this album teach us about love in the face of disaster?
“You’re Breathing In Fumes”
The album’s titular first track, “Black Celebration,” opens by inviting listeners to “have a black celebration… To celebrate the fact / That we’ve seen the back / Of another black day,“ setting the stage for revelry with a sober undertone, the combination of which will be maintained throughout the tracklist. Similarly, the buoyant and high-energy second track “Fly On the Windscreen (Final)” tells us: “Death is everywhere / There are flies on the windscreen… Reminding us / We could be torn apart,“ and later: “There are lambs for the slaughter / Waiting to die.“ The apocalyptic setting is obvious and heavy, weighing down the listener despite the vigorous instrumentation. This creates a sense of constant tension or unease, even paranoia—the speaker sees death in even the most mundane of circumstances, which is shockingly resonant with the current climate of, well, everything.
The sense of urgency reaches a boiling point in track six, “A Question of Time,” where the speaker describes that they’ve “got to get to you first / Before they do / It’s just a question of time / Before they lay their hands on you.“ While perhaps least foreboding in physical imagery, “A Question of Time” finds its sense of desperation in the situation: the speaker is racing to protect their teenage lover from corruption by other men—it’s an internal apocalypse, rather than an external one. But, even the slow ballad “A Question of Lust” has its gravity, where the speaker laments of “not letting / What we’ve built up / Crumble to dust.“
Of course, we can’t speak of Black Celebration without mentioning the iconic line from the most popular song “Stripped”—itself laced with visions of environmental collapse: “You’re breathing in fumes / I taste when we kiss,“ which is as visceral as it is poignant. These are just a few examples among many. The common theme is a sense of destruction, of impending doom, and an urgent fight to stay alive—literally and existentially—despite the horrors. So, we might ask, how do we do that? How do we find a light when the sky is fogged with smoke and debris?
“I Taste When We Kiss”
The solution, of course, is to look towards our loves and desires. The urgency created by the apocalyptic setting translates into fulfilling our desires now. In “Fly On the Windscreen (Final)” the central refrain is: “Come here / Kiss me / Now,“ which is strikingly similar to later club bangers with the theme of “the world might end tomorrow, so let’s love tonight.” Further, in “Black Celebration,” the speaker confesses that he wants “to take you / In my arms / Forgetting all I couldn’t do today,“ which speaks to a particular type of escapism that is only found in love and companionship: of coming home to a lover and freeing oneself from the hardship of fighting to stay alive.
Escapist themes are further developed in “Stripped,” where the speaker invites their lover to “Take my hand / Come back to the land / Let’s get away / Just for one day,“ promoting the necessity of and desire for reprieve in times of strife and stress. The speaker also asks their lover to show themselves at their most authentic: “Stripped down to the bone,“ echoing the paranoid sentiment from “A Question of Time,” that the antagonistic other men will “strip you down.“ Being “stripped,” then, carries with it both intimate vulnerability and destructive danger. In the apocalypse, intimacy becomes a risk, a hazard, while also being a restorative, life-saving necessity.
In “It Doesn’t Matter Two” (named so as not to confuse it with another track, “It Doesn’t Matter,” from their previous 1984 album Some Great Reward), the speaker soliloquizes: “You grip me with your eyes / And then I realise / It doesn’t matter.“ “It” of course, refers to the pain and suffering the speaker undergoes in this time of struggle. Thus, we find here the importance of love, connection, and desire in the fight to stay alive—it is a requirement to balance dread with moments of refuge, to have a person who can act as an escape from suffering—someone who can offer hope despite, despite, despite.
“Take My Hand”
But how does this apply to today, when the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic still linger around us, and isolation and loneliness feel easier than venturing outward, and risking vulnerability comes at the high cost of even more pain? The answer is, unfortunately, to try anyway. In “Black Celebration,” the speaker looks “to you / How you carry on / When all hope is gone,“ and further describes how “Your optimistic eyes / Seem like paradise / To someone like / Me.“ The description of “paradise” acts as a strong juxtaposition to the “black day” from which the speaker is recovering—it’s finding a small pocket of heaven in a hellish world.
The speaker of “It Doesn’t Matter Two” describes that “Though we may be the last in the world / We feel like pioneers / Telling hopes and fears / To one another,“ which is reminiscent of biblical stories, such as that of Adam and Eve or Noah’s Ark. Those who are “the last in the world,“ are also the first in the creation of a new world that is, with any luck, better than the previous. In the chorus of “World Full of Nothing,” the speaker repeats: “Though it’s not love / It means something,“ which amplifies a small message of hope in a song that is otherwise despondent, and—some might say—nihilistic.
The outro of “A Question of Time” is a cry that “It should be better with you,“ which points to injustice, radical anger, and a motivation for change. In the album’s final track, “New Dress,” the speaker describes how “You can’t change the world / But you can change the facts / And when you change the facts / You change points of view / If you change points of view / You may change a vote / And when you change a vote / You may change the world.“ The song as a whole speaks to how the media and news sources control and promote what are considered important “facts,“ highlighting how we prioritize trivial, surface level news over the reality of world disasters and tragedies. Thus, Black Celebration shows listeners the importance of love, community, and care for one another in bleak times; how connection is not only essential for personal escape, but also for a sense of motivation to make the necessary changes to build a better world.
To return to our question from the beginning: what can this album teach us about love in the face of disaster? The answer, as I hope to have shown, is that Black Celebration tells us to look to each other for strength and escapism when the future is at its most bleak. It’s a message of despite; I love you and will fight for you despite the uncertainty and the bleakness. Like many Romantic-era poems, there is a moment of hope, of reprieve, however brief, within these songs. As an astonishing piece of art 40 years later, Black Celebration continues the Romantic legacy in a way that, I think, the poets of the late eighteenth and early-nineteenth century would approve of. Celebrate Black Celebration today by giving it a listen.