Depeche Mode – “Just Can’t Get Enough”
Depeche Mode are a curious lot in that they’ve made a lot of entertaining singles in which you can plainly see the seeds of their future complete awfulness: for much of the band’s lifespan (OK, the 80s) there’s quite a fruitful tension between poptastic tunesmithery and hard dancefloor action and lyrical/vocal seriousness which stops the records being more embarassing than charming and which sometimes makes them sneakily effective. And then the first and second elements went AWOL and suddenly the band was as terrible as you always thought they could be.
But also there’s their curious early period, the Vince Clark years, which have nothing of the gloom or metaphysics or BDSM and which amp up the pop bounce at the exclusion of all else. I didn’t nominate this song and I think the OMD tribute “New Life” is quietly a lot better, but “Just Can’t Get Enough” is probably the most ruthlessly Bucks Fizz catchy record Depeche Mode ever made and hence is one of their most memorable. It comes off as a more virginal, dry run Erasure but it’s still pleasantly ticklish that the same band nominally made this and the grisly “Barrel Of A Gun”.