“Enjoy The Silence” is Depeche Mode’s highest charting song in the US and one of several top ten hits in their homeland the UK. It won “Best British Single” at the 1991 Brit Awards.

In 2010, Pitchfork placed it at #15 on their Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s. Rolling Stone described it as “sensually serene”.

Rolling Stone placed the song in the 415th place of the 500 best songs of all time, quoting the making of the song:

It was kind of half a song,” Gahan said. “And Alan and Flood, who was producing the album, had this idea to put a beat to it.” When Martin Gore added the guitar, that was it.

Vocalist Dave Gahan explained that “Enjoy The Silence” began as a “very slow, ballad-y couple of verses” but bandmate Alan Wilder and producer Flood converted it into the danceable new wave hit it became. At first, songwriter Martin Gore was initially not on board with the uptempo rewrite.

I thought the very nature of the song was, you know, enjoy the silence, so it ought to have a very serene atmosphere. It took me a while to get used to the idea, but as we took it further that way with the guitar riff, it really pulled together.