Black Celebration

Album Summary

Black Celebration is the fifth studio album by the English electronic music band Depeche Mode, released on 17 March 1986 by Mute Records in the UK and Sire Records in the US. Recorded in London and West Berlin, it was produced by Depeche Mode, Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones. At the prompting of Miller, the band recorded the album using the "live the album" ethos inspired by the film director Werner Herzog, which led to considerable tension between the band and both Miller and Jones, resulting in neither being involved in the production of subsequent Depeche Mode albums. The album was promoted by the singles "Stripped", "A Question of Lust", and "A Question of Time". In the US, "But Not Tonight" was released as a single instead of "Stripped". In support of the album, Depeche Mode embarked on the five-month-long Black Celebration Tour across Europe, North America, and Japan, which ran from early to mid-1986. Black Celebration is considered by critics as the start of a four album series of well-regarded Depeche Mode albums, continuing with Music for the Masses (1987), Violator (1990) and Songs of Faith and Devotion (1993). Three years after its release, Spin ranked it as the 15th-greatest album of all time, and the UK's Radio X in 2011 cited it as one of the most influential albums of the 1980s. Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor later cited Black Celebration as a source of inspiration for his album debut, Pretty Hate Machine (1989).

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