Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Pitchfork Media | 7.9/10 |
| Hipersónica | Favourable |
| Q | |
| Sputnikmusic | |
| Slant Magazine | |
| Rolling Stone (1990) | |
| Rolling Stone (2009) | |
| Entertainment Weekly | B− |
As a sign of their rising success and popularity when Violator was released, a signing party for fans at a Wherehouse record store in Los Angeles that was expected to draw only a few thousand fans ended up drawing around 15,000. The band were forced to withdraw from the event due to security concerns, and their failure to appear nearly caused a riot.
Violator was the first Depeche Mode album to sell a million copies in the United States. As of 2010, Violator had sold more than 15 million copies, and remains the band's best selling album worldwide. Violator reached number 17 on the Billboard Year-End chart in 1990.
Cited as one of the best albums of the '90s, Violator was critically acclaimed upon its initial release and is featured on various lists of the greatest albums of that decade.
In 2003, the album was ranked number 342 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Violator is also featured on lists of the greatest albums of all time made by magazines like Q and Spin.
Read more about this topic: Violator (album)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)