12. Depeche Mode | "Black Celebration"

"Black Celebration" by Depeche Mode from the album Black Celebration (1986)

Prior to 1986’s Black Celebration, Depeche Mode were a group of earnest young oinks playing with eyeliner and synths in search of a new romanticism within crooning songcraft — but after the dark gauntlet thrown down with this opening title track, there was no backing down from the kohl-eyed aesthetic that would, within a few years' time, come to dominate the sound of modern music in both underground and mainstream circles. Though DM would had bigger hits in this dark vein in the ensuing decade, it all started here, with this song’s simple entwining of romantic fealty and negasonic impulses. With a symphonic shimmer that sounds eerily similar to Goblin’s theme song to ’70s Italo-horror film Suspiria, Dave Gahan and friends raise a glass to the crappiness of existence, extolling the virtues of fucking death away through slinky seduction and clinking mechanical madness.
 Daniel Brockman