10 Rock Music Acts That Went Dark (AND NAILED IT)

From the first days they performed, Depeche Mode were always emphatic that they were a pop band before anything else. Even though their songs may have gone in some strange directions here and there, they never lost the love of a good hook that grabs you from the minute the song starts and makes you want to listen to it again and again. It had been almost a decade since the days of Just Can't Get Enough though, and the new wave nerds had gotten some much darker textures in that span of time.

While there's no reason why an album with this much synth would have had a say in the '90s, Violator taps into something that bands like Tears For Fears had only hinted at in their heyday. By taking the cold and calculated sounds of the synthesizer, these songs turned into something a lot more foreboding in the mixing process, with Dave Gahan's baritone voice filling you with dread on songs like Personal Jesus and Enjoy the Silence. Although not all of these songs have dark undertones to them, you can definitely feel the more lonely sentiment now more than ever.

Take a song like Waiting for the Night for example. There's not really much going on in the track outside of a few synthesized passages pushing the whole thing along, but letting everything linger a little bit longer lets that isolating feeling sink in, almost like someone's looking over your shoulder and about to strike you down at any second. In an era just before grunge really came in and hit the music scene, Depeche Mode were one of the first to remind us that it was okay to be a little bit darker when you reach for the top of the charts.