Music

You Need to Listen to This Song Right Now #39

Heavy Rotation — Ghosts Again, Depeche Mode (Memento Mori, 2023)

Heavy Rotation was a music industry term for songs that one way or another got incessant airplay. It referred to the large amount of rotations that a particular record was given on turntables at radio stations. Since, until the 1980s, this was the only way to get new music into the ears and brains of listeners, heavy rotation meant increased sales. These were good for record companies and artists alike.

Today, some of us still put records on at home and give them a spin. Most of us don’t. However, the term still applies, just in a different way. Streaming services like Spotify sell subscriptions to listeners and then pay artists based on listens. At least, that’s the way we think it works.

For me, heavy rotation means a song that is in my head for some reason. Maybe for a moment, maybe for a day, maybe for longer. It’s a song that you come back to from time to time and still feels just as good.

This series of articles is dedicated to these songs.

Here, I aim to highlight a particular song by a particular band or singer. We should know a bit about the band, a bit about where the song fits into its history and where the song fits into what was happening in music at that time. Then there’s the song itself. Who’s playing on it, what are the lyrics getting at, and why is it so good? How does it still occupy sonic space in our lives?

I’ll (try to) keep it short. It shouldn’t take you any longer to read this than the song itself. To that end, I’ll put a Youtube clip of the original recording at the top of the article so you can listen as you read. Or not. And because a song is often much different live than in the recording studio, I’ll stick a live clip on at the end.

What song is in your head right now? Here’s the one that won’t leave mine today:

#39 — Ghosts Again, Depeche Mode (Memento Mori, 2023)

Honestly, what do you want me to tell you about Depeche Mode that hasn’t already been said? They are true giants, Dave Gahan and Martin Gore, and until his departure from this mortal coil in 2022, Andy Fletcher.

I’ve even already said so, in a previous article in this series, about a different song of theirs.

It’s been forty years since the pure pop satisfaction of “Just Can’t Enough,” the immediacy in the message of “People are People,” through the thunderous peals of “Never Let Me Down,” the menacing stomp of “Personal Jesus,” the drug-addled hypnotic intensity of “I Feel You,” rock bottom resurrection of “Walking in My Shoes,” the end of the century sultry louche feel of “Dream On,” the act of breaking down to desire of “A Pain That I’m Used To,” and the certainty that a lover has made a mistake in “It’s no Good.”

“I’m hanging on your words / Living on your breath / Feeling with your skin / Will I always be here”. That’s a small slice of the desperation described in “In Your Room” in 1993. How could they top that, now thirty years hence?

Even on their last album, the assuredness of “Going Backwards” showed that far from being close to the end, they still had plenty left to give us.

But now a new Depeche Mode album is upon us. It’s their fifteenth and the first since “Spirit” in 2017. I was lucky to see them in Bogota, Colombia, on that tour in 2018, and I can assure you that the live spectacle of this band is well intact. This one is titled “Momento Mori,” and its appearance is cause for special attention, if not celebration.

I haven’t heard anything but the lead single as yet, but Ghosts Again is destined to be a classic of the genre.

We come in with a beat long since established via drum loop and synth-bass. The production is immaculate from the first beat. A guitar progression by Gore sets the melancholy melody, and it’s with Gahan’s first vocal at 00:35 that we remember where we are and why we are there: for a soothing balm that cuts to the bone.

That voice. Nobody conveys the underbelly of life and the darkness of emotion quite like him. Sonorous is one word for it. Crystal clear is another. It’s a voice that convinces the listener that he has indeed seen it all and is through the other side but still carrying a heavy weight with him.

It’s perfect for this particular song. I don’t know this for sure, but I want to believe that it is a love note about the passing of long-time band mate and keyboardist Andy Fletcher.

If it’s not, then for sure, it’s about death, finality, and impermanence. Everything is temporary, and Gahan and Gore, as survivors, know that their lives, their fame, and their work are too.

“Heaven’s dreaming

Thoughtless thoughts, my friends

We know we’ll be ghosts again”.

Richard Butler gets a songwriting credit, and I can hear the Psychedelic Furs frontman’s lyrical sensibilities shining through.

Nothing lasts. Nothing is meant to. And there is nothing to be done about it. The album title itself is Latin for “remember that you will die.” It’s all very heavy, but really it’s reality. “Everybody says goodbye,” sings Gahan.

But what we do in the meantime with it will tell the story. Instead of waiting for its inevitability, trying to capture its fleeting moments and make them mean something.

“Sunday shining

Silver linings

Weightless hours

All my flowers”

It has moments and eras of both melancholy and joy, life, and often at the same time. The afterlife will come soon enough. But it’s in the crescendo just after 3:00, Gahan’s sound and spirit flood through most and wrap themselves around you. There is still power to be given and faith to be placed; there is still more to come. It’s not over yet.

Equally as sublime as the lyrics and music are the production of this song. The textures of electronic elements, the guitar, and Gahan’s and Gore’s voices are combined exquisitely, and everything flows together. The song's end comes abruptly, and though I would have preferred a fade-out, I think I can grasp what they were communicating with that choice.

“Hellos, goodbyes.” They don’t always turn out the way you wanted.

Here they are, live very recently doing the promo rounds in Europe:

If you have made it this far, it will occur to you that if this is #39 in this series, then there must be 38 previous ones. This is a correct assumption, and here I will link #38. At the bottom of it, you will find a link to #37, and at the bottom of that, you can — if you so choose — be taken to #36. This ingenious system that I thought up all by myself continues all the way to #1.

I really do hope that you like what you have just read. If you want unlimited access to thousands of writers, consider a subscription to Medium. It will set you back $5 a month and if you use the link below, then I get a slice of that. I’m going to buy this record. Just as soon as I get a record player.