1985 Singles # 40 Depeche Mode

So we're at theTop Forty. The mark of success. the charts rundown when they were announced on Tuesday lunchtimes on Radio One and then again more formally on Sunday afternoons. l lost track of this after 1985 largely. I became more interested in Sonic Youth and Mantronix as I moved out until the world with a vague,undirected thrill.

I was excited most of all I suspect. About what was coming next. What was around the corner.  But the charts still meant a lot to a lot to a lot to a lot of people. Including me. It meant everything to have one of 'my bands' featuring there. Maybe meaning they'd  be on Top of the Pops on Thursday evening. But 1985 marked the point at which I made my move. From hearth and home to the outside world and the charts became more marginal as they became irrelevant to my thinking. Became more negligible despite Morrissy's Last Stand. I knew what I liked. It was the year of Live Aid.

My culture was in decline, though we didn't know it. 'My Bands' featured in the charts towards the end of the Seventies and early Eighties. They were the charts and The Culture. Interventions from the likes of Rene & Renata, Captain Beaky and Shaddapa Your Face were the abberations. Keeping the likes of Blondie and Squeeze from their rightully deserved Number Ones. I remember when Bob Geldof ripped up a picture of John Travolta up when the Bootownn Rats usurped Grease at Number One with Ratrap in 1978. It mattered. It was a teenage game played out in the charts, the music papers and magazines and TOTP. Us V Them.

A gradual transition toom place in the early Eighties. 'My Bands,' the Punk and Post Punk bands fell from favour one by one, had had their chartmoment and disbanded or made their move to The States to try to make it there. A thankless task. The Cure and Depeche Mode were notably the British bands who made the signiicant and lasting breakthrough.

Mode featured less among the bands I considered mine from now on. even as their commercial star rose.  I thought the lyrics were daft, even though at this distance what they were doing musically seems masterful. Jackie meets S&M. and leather and painted nails.

1985 saw them holding ground with a Mute singles compilation on the market whie they plotted their next move. It felt like younger sister stuff to me. My own younger sister I suspect wasn't paying too much attention herself. She had discovered The Triffids. The Jesus & Maty Chain. Bobby Gillespie. Ranting in the NME about the American guitar invasion. Showing off his leather trousers and Chelsea Boots and banging on about Aftermath. Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds. And errm Public Image Limited.