46. Depeche Mode - People Are People (Mute)

 

Two weeks at number one from w/e 14th April 1984

Depeche Mode’s first single of 1984 begins with what sounds like an explosion in a crockery cupboard, followed by five swings into a digital punchbag, before looping back again. It feels loud, up-to-the-minute - those samples as brutal as anything Art of Noise were doing that year – then thuds its last, entering into a glistening electronic harp effect, before Gahan sings the big reveal:

“People are People so why should it be/ you and I should get along so aw-fully?”

Oh. You immediately get the impression Martin Gore thought he had created a grand slogan here, one which could proudly open the song, but it’s an unfortunate example of him falling back into his naive teenage ways (despite no longer being a teen). On “See You” he pronounced that “I think that you’ll find people are basically the same”, and “People Are People” returns to this point. Are we not, he seems to ask, fundamentally driven by the same desires, the same emotions, the same need to commune in pleasancy?

As the song unfolds it at least expands on this point a bit more gracefully. If “We’re different colours/ and we’re different creeds/ and different people have different needs” sounds a little bit too close to David Brent for comfort, the sneer of “I’m relying on your common decency/ So far it hasn’t surfaced/ but I’m sure it exists/ it just take a while to travel/ from your head to your fists” is at least a smart putdown, albeit one which probably would cut no ice with the person shouting aggressively in a pub car park.

The song’s strengths lie away from its well-meaning but wide-eyed lyrics. “People Are People” sees Depeche progressing from the gentile industrialisms of “Construction Time Again”, where at certain moments it felt as if they were tinkling on metallic surfaces gracefully, into something harder, more aggressive. The compressed thwacks and crashes are both akin to the harder edges of the emerging industrial scene and strangely dancefloor friendly, and the arrangement packs everything it can into it; vocal breakdowns, Art of Noise styled bass vocal samples, despairing symphonic synth lines and crashing orchestral stabs.

It is, in short, as subtle as a brick in the face but complicated all the same, which is one reason the lyrics can sometimes be ignored or dismissed. If you’re going to place them within the context of an arrangement which is essentially one melodic exclamation mark after another, you can just about get away with viewing society through a panicked, simplistic and over-dramatic lens. Taken by itself, it’s an enjoyable cacophony, an overloaded piece of pop whose only real attempts at subtlety are Martin Gore singing “I can’t understand what makes a man hate another man” like a wounded child in a playground. Even that, it has to be said, isn’t exactly understated. 

33b. New Order - Blue Monday (Factory)

Number One for five more weeks from 1st October 1983

Anybody who read the preceding entry to this one could hardly be surprised to find "Blue Monday" back at number one. The indie chart is more volatile to tracks yo-yoing around the listings than most, but even the National Charts couldn't shake themselves free of Blue Monday's broad and enduring appeal. As holiday makers returned from the club nights they'd enjoyed during the long, sticky summer of 1983, demand was reinvigorated and it ricocheted into the National Top Ten for the first time.

For what else went on while it enjoyed a second stay at the top, please see below.

Week One

7. The Fall - Kicker Conspiracy (Rough Trade)

Peak position: 3

Way before New Order's football record, here was The Fall's, with less ecstacy and more hot dogs, lager and weary references to football hooliganism. "Kicker Conspiracy" occasionally sees Mark E Smith at his least cryptic and most everyday - even a Cockney Rejects fan could understand what "Remember! You are abroad/ Remember! The police are rough!" is referring to - but then he veers back into the land of The Fall and manages to make the sport sound mystical and arcane. To this day, I haven't made my mind up what "Plastic, slime, partitions, cocktail, zig-zag, tudor bar" actually means (I suspect it's a reference to the gentrification of the big game, but leave your own ideas in the comments).

Still, this is as populist and immediate as early Fall gets, and it's a corker, its strident, military march feeling somewhat appropriate for a Saturday session. 

17. Depeche Mode - Love In Itself (Mute)

Peak position: 4

The least political track on "Construction Time Again" becomes the second and final single to be taken from it, and while it worked perfectly fine as the album's opener, something seems awry on 45, almost as if it's a hook or two short of becoming the pop anthem it truly wants to be. 

Still, the razzing, brassy synthetic intro is powerful enough to stop the track from being merely middling, and Gahan sounds almost livid while he ruminates on love and its actual meaning in a society filled with anything but. In 1982, Martin Gore asked us what the meaning of love was and sounded child-like. Here, he sounds like it might have dawned on him and he's now embittered. A year is a long time if you're in your early twenties.

The final synth solo at the end of this track sounds as if Alan Wilder is making things up as he goes along, and that mad spree gives the single a much needed final boost, but it wasn't enough - this was their first single to fail to reach the national top twenty since their debut "Dreaming Of Me" (it had to make do with a number 21 placing). 

20. Play Dead - Shine (Beggars Banquet)

Peak position: 10

23. Under Two Flags - Lest We Forget (Situation Two)

Peak position: 23

28. Combat 84 - Rapist (Victory)

Peak position: 23

Elsewhere in their catalogue, skinhead punk group Combat 84 ranted and raved "Fuck Off CND!" and "It's better to be dead than red!" On this one, they go into an irate diatribe about how all rapists should be hung. "We want capital punishment!" they demand.

Their politics were much debated at the time, but hardly really need to be guessed at here. Remember - the indie charts are a very broad church.