"Enjoy the Silence" (Depeche Mode)

When Depeche Mode's Martin Gore wrote "Enjoy the Silence" (1990), he envisioned something acoustic and spare: a lone voice and a harmonium, delivering an intimate lovers' prayer from the sanctuary of some ancient church.  That version of the song actually exists, in fact.  It wasn't until the band's producer, Flood, and keyboardist Alan Wilder suggested that the melody could use a beat, a bassline, and some guitar that the familiar version of the track from Violator began to take shape.  Although Gore was reluctant at first to have them screw with his original concept, by the time he'd added that indelible guitar riff, he realized that they might have an actual hit song on their hands.
I recall "Enjoy the Silence" being like a breath of fresh air in 1990.  In the midst of having Hammertime and the last gasp of glam metal shoved at us by MTV (Warrant and Winger, anyone?), suddenly there was this mature ballad out of left field with a soulful vocal by Dave Gahan.  It was Gothic yet somehow bright, and it had this danceable feel—the kind of deep groove that Downtown Julie Brown should have been wubba wubba wubba-ing all over on Club MTV.  On top of that, its artsy video of a king wandering the world, just looking for a place to sit and "enjoy the silence," was a complete departure from parachute pants and teased up hair.
The fact that it became a Top 10 hit and the band's biggest-ever single in the U.S. kind of proves that everyone was ready for something different.