DEPECHE MODE - THE BOTTOM LINE from their 1997 album, "Ultra"
"Ultra" saw Depeche Mode at a low point in their career after the 1995 departure of keyboardist and songwriter Alan Wilder (who was a DM founding member and, later, Erasure founding member Vince Clarke's replacement after his departure in 1981) for his own project Recoil. He was acknowledged by fans and critics to be an important (if not lower-profile) contributor to the evolution of DM's sound. Dave Gahan also managed to live through a suicide attempt in 1995 and a drug overdose that landed him in Cedars-Sinai in 1996. This did not bode well for a new album of the superlative quality that was expected of them.
Unfortunately, to my ears, "Ultra" somewhat under-performed as feared. Though I had a hard time choosing either "Sister of Night" or "The Bottom Line" for this post, I found many of the songs on this record to be rather slow and dreary. "The Bottom Line" always stuck in my head, however, because it was connected to the first time that, as a young, wild innocent, I had to meet the M-word face-to-face. No, not mortality. Marriage.
A high school friend of mine made what seemed to be a poorly thought-out decision to get engaged to her boyfriend. We were all about 17 or 18 at the time. Though I liked both sides of the equation and wished them well, I could not fathom what in the Sam Hell could compel them to make this momentous, earth-shattering decision at our jobless, directionless age. Then I went to their engagement party, and their song, "The Bottom Line" played as they swayed in formalwear on the dance floor; practice for the real thing, I guess.
This song almost made it possible to believe that these two were doing the right thing. The lyrics may help you understand this intense song of loyalty and slavish devotion, once again sung by the angel Martin Gore:
Like a cat
Dragged in from the rain
Who goes straight back out
To do it all over again
I'll be back for more
It's something
That is out of our hands
Something we will never understand
It's a hidden law
The apple falls
Destiny calls
I follow you
Like a pawn
On the eternal board
Who's never quite sure
What he's moved towards
I walk blindly on
And heaven is in front of me
Your heaven beckons me enticingly
When I arrive
It's gone
The river flows
The wise man knows
I follow you
I'm yearning
I'm burning
I feel love's wheels turning
Like a moth on love's bright light
I will get burned
each and every night
I'm dying to(o)
The sun will shine
The bottom line
I follow you
I would follow Martin Gore through five football fields full of horse-puckey like Tim Robbins in "Shawshank" if he sang these words to me in his lilting tenor. I can see why my friends made this foolish decision if this was the soundtrack. They didn't make it to the altar, but this song lives on in their memory.
Here is a live video of Martin Gore tearing up this song:
Yes, it is a rather dark song for a wedding. We were full-on goth back then. My husband and I got married to U2's "All I Want Is You," personally.
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