Depeche Mode – Stripped
#quotefromthe80s
Let me see you stripped
Down to the bone
Let me hear you make decisions
Without your television
#Stripped #DepecheMode
In February 1986, just before Valentine’s Day, Depeche Mode hit the market with a new song, anticipating the release of their fifth studio album, Black Celebration, which was due for release in mid-March. It had been more or less a year and a half since the previous album, although during this time they had still released several compilations in different markets. In Europe, for example, they had released the famous collection The Singles 81-85.
With their previous album Some Great Reward, Depeche had accustomed us to very high levels: this album had brought them to the top of their fame, thanks to historical hits such as People are people, Master and servant, Blasphemous rumours or Somebody. And even Black Celebration will not miss expectations. A very black album right from the title, in a literal sense of noir.
Not that Depeche were ever too happy, but the black turn of this album was evident. Sounds, videos, images, texts, everything was dark. But that didn’t make it bad or unlistenable at all. Depeche Mode were evolving towards a new stage in their immense career. Black Celebration as we said was introduced with a truly unforgettable first single, Stripped, a song that really went down in history.
The text might make us think of physical nudity as the argument of the song, but it is not. The stripping that Depeche Mode mention is in reality the abandonment of all those things and schemas we can’t do without, in order to live our lives in an industrial, bourgeois and social context. The text is simple but clear, and is an invitation to get away for just one day from the city and its fumes and to lie down on the grass, among the trees, in absolute simplicity, away from the influences of television, the metropolis, and all our mental structures.
And the video is literally smashing, especially for the cars involved! Indeed, the scene takes place at night, in an open space similar to a junkyard. The video alternates images of Depeche, even on screens and backgrounds created on the fly, with scenes in which they destroy cars using sledgehammers, thus symbolizing the destruction of all those social bonds that prevent us from really being ourselves.
Stripped quickly became one of the historic songs of Depeche Mode’s long career, and thanks to this beautiful song a new phase in the history of this great group began, which will bring them well beyond the 80s.
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