The Alternative Number Ones: Depeche Mode’s “I Feel You”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

At some point in the early '90s, Depeche Mode became a rock 'n' roll band. This was a slow evolution in retrospect. It probably started when Vince Clarke left the group in 1981. Clarke wrote the shiny-blippy synthpop jams on the first Depeche Mode album. When he was gone, Martin Gore took over as lead songwriter and gradually moved the group in a twinkly-broody direction. Depeche Mode got bigger as their music got darker. They played arenas, then stadiums. They started putting guitars in their music more and more often. Even as all that was happening, the world continued to regard them as a synthpop act. So when Depeche Mode came roaring back with the revved-up blues-boogie "I Feel You" in 1993, people were pretty surprised.

Maybe people shouldn't have been surprised. Depeche Mode reached their critical and commercial apex with 1990's Violator, a no-shit classic that might work as the platonic-ideal fusion of gothed-out synthpop and arena rock. Violator went triple platinum in the US; it sent two songs to #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart and one into the top 10 of the Hot 100, the real chart. They were about as big as an alternative rock band could get in 1990, but then that math changed over the next few years. Like their fellow '80s overlords U2, Depeche Mode realized that they needed to evolve to meet the moment. Depeche Mode evolved messily, but they still evolved.