I think Depeche Mode is generally considered a respectable band. However, synth bands are not respectable by many folks ( Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Duran Duran ).
Why are synth bands gnereally maligned or not respected as much as other bands? Many believe if you play a tune on guitar, you’re ok, but if you play the same tune on synth, you suck.
What distinguishes Depeche Mode from other synth bands that gives them more respect or credibility than other synth bands?
Not being a hardcore fan of the genre, but having lived with it from the start, you’ll have to take this in the YMMV cathegory.
Once Vince Clarke left, DM turned darker, and Gahan’s abuse problems certainly didn’t lower the cred factorr. DM is credited with creating their own sounds (much like Yello and Kraftwerk), rather than sampling existing sounds. The flirting with darkness, much like Joy Division did, is another aspect that has helped create an image of “serious” musicians - nohing like a little Kafka, Camus and Nitschze to create an air of respectability.
Above all, no matter what instruments they use, they still make great pop songs. A good song, with a catchy chorus and and a complelling bridge, will always triumph. DM is goood at that.
I think that New Order is, if anything, more respected than DM. But other than that, I agree with the premise of your OP. As to why, I got nothin. I respect the same percentage of synth bands as I do guitar bands of the time, perhaps even more. After all, DM, New Order, and OMD is quite a large percentage of synth bands when you take into account Sturgeon’s Law (not to say that I like DM, merely that I don’t disparage them as lightweights.)
synths don’t rawk the way a guitar can - you can’t move (as easily) with a synth, and they tend to lack the same organic tone that is available out of a guitar
they were originally very thin-sounding.
they were often used for dance tracks
Bottom line is that many/most guitar rocker guys think that synths are for wimps, for better or worse. You can point out amazing Prince or Nine Inch Nails tracks - let alone DM or New Order who have already been cited - that are largely synth-based but pulse with life and song-writing goodness and many folks will check out all the same. Their loss.
Although the band is by no means guitar-heavy, they certainly sprinkle a noticeable dash of guitar into their musical stew. I would imagine that helps them avoid being perceived as a band that lets the machines do all the work.
Does DM have all that much synth-cred? I figure Tangerine Dream and Gary Numan have synth-cred, but DM?
Ministry’s album Twitch broke new ground, I thought. It was heavily programmed, but used new sounds and sampling to take it to a new head-banging industrial level.
Yello is awesome, even if their music was sometimes heavily programmed. They’ve got their own original genre of techno-synth sound without ever dirtying themselves in “pop.”
I wonder where Kraftwerk fits in? Synth-cred they have. But do they deserve it?
Yeah, anymore you’d be surprised at the number of bands that name DM as an influence or claim that they were the reason they got into music. Both electronic and rock bands.
Ministry’s “Twitch” is a good album, but I don’t personally find it all that far off in production from DM’s “Black Celebration” or “Some Great Reward”. Songwise, yeah, they’re pretty different and Ministry tries to work toward a less pop-structured approach, but the production techniques and synths are terribly different, IMO.
I think one of the reasons that DM gets more street cred than some of the other 80’s synth bands is that many of the others play pure unabashed pop. DM started out that way and have included nods to pop music in every album, but they also focused on creating a more serious image both through the music and through pictures/video/live shows. Even during the 80’s, DM claimed more of an affinity with bands like the Cure and the Smiths than they did with the electropop of the time. I think it’s more of a question of the band’s attitude in that, by 1986, they were focused on trying to be viewed as serious artists and not necessarily interested in creating the sugary pop created by bands like PSB or Erasure.
levdrakon, correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like you’re discussing which synth bands have more cred as synth artists?
Not to nitpick, but the OP’s talking about which synth bands have more cred with people who disdain synth music. I think it’s safe to say that DM gets a fair amount of credit with people whose music tastes normally lead them to disregard synth (although even then they get trashed quite a bit; see Venture Bros. comments that membership in the band implies homosexuality).
Ah, in that case I got nothin’.
Orgy are pretty well-respected. I think the ratio of synth to guitar has a lot to do with it.
But he’s the guy from depeche mode!
By… um… who? People who believe stuff like… Fred Durst is a real musician?
I agree with this assessment wholeheartedly.
If you compare “Just Can’t Get Enough” and “Stripped” (which oddly enough is playing right now, weird eh?), it’s like you’re listening to two different bands.
I think if Synth music isn’t at least a little dark, it can come off as too cutesy (for lack of a better word), like OMD and Erasure. As **Charlie Tan ** said, DM can pull of dark synth and it’s still catchy.
I’m not sure there are many other bands that can do that. Joy Division, as good as they were, were only dark. I didn’t find anything that I’ve heard from them to be catchy.
:dubious: Not as dark as DM, but not “at least a little dark?” OMD has tons of dark stuff. Even most the stuff that is ostensibly happy from the beat and the lyrics has downbeat (in both ways) singing and/or minor keys. Sort of like the electronica version of The Cure (although The Cure loses respectibility in my eyes since they force stuff to sound depressing even when it should be happy, but they aren’t firmly electronica so that’s a hijack.)
Really? I guess I’m only familiar with Tesla Girls, Telegraph, Enola Gay, Genetic Engineering, most of the Crush album, all of The Pacific Age, and that horrible “If You Leave”.
If anything they did after 1986 was “dark”, I didn’t hear it.
I’m only familiar with the bolded work but all but the truly bad “If You Leave” have components of darkness that put them in the realm of more than “not at least a little dark.” (If You Leave was the only song I heard from them in the 80s and it made me not even try to listen to them until after 2000!)
And “Maid of Orleans” and “Joan of Arc” are so dark I was surprised they are originals and not by Leonard Cohen. “Messages” is probably the saddest song I’ve ever heard, accompanied by a synth version of what I call the “universal hook” it stylistically shares with the theme of The Wall that simultaneously reaches the highest heights of hope and the deepest depths of soul-crushing despair.
I would like to add that DM is also one of the few “synth”-bands to can pull of a great live gig.
The last few DVD’s of their live tour are absolutely among some of the greatest live performances I have ever seen.
Plus they have a list of songs that are absolutely amazing.
About every album has had some brilliant songs.
And yes, I am a DM “fan” and have been since I was a little whippersnapper.
Let me just add that DM has perhaps the opposite problem w/r/t The Cure (and OMD, to a degree) : they can’t make themselves sound serious for all the world. Even when singing a song with sort of a message they sound lightweight: for instance their first breakthrough hit, of course, and whatever song goes “God’s got a sick sense of humour”.
Don’t get me wrong, they get more “serious musician” props from me than many other synth pop bands, but not as much as one might assume from reading the OP.
If you’re speaking lyrically dark, then I will agree with the bolded items, but I think DM’s music is much darker. Even with lyrics that are a little dark, OMD’s music sounds very peppy and cutesy to me–much like DM’s Speak and Spell with Vince Clarke.
Unfortunately, I haven’t heard any of those, so I can’t comment on them.
On preview:
I completely disagree with this. Listen to songs like “Stripped” and “A Question of Time” and tell me they aren’t serious.
I guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree since we came to about the exact opposite conclusions about the two bands 
So… where does everyone think Yaz (Yazoo in the UK) fits in here? Vince Clark’s stop-over between Depeche Mode and Erasure. For bizarre coincidental reasons, I was listening to “Upstairs at Eric’s” the other day and was really intrigued by some of the sonic experiments that seemed to be going on. Overall, it’s dance club material, but there is some interestin’ shit going on here and there (but less so in the highly popular bubblegum dance tracks).