Little 15: the single that was not France-only

When the familiar reference gets it wrong

The Singles 86>98 described Little 15 as a France-only single. The official Depeche Mode archive explicitly corrects that account. It lists releases in several European countries, including Britain, and dates the UK seven-inch to 16 May 1988. Its catalogue number was LITTLE 15. The American release came later, in the 1991 singles-box programme. ^[1]

There is another story on the reverse

The UK seven-inch pairs the song with Stjarna. The twelve-inch adds Sonata No. 14 in C#m, identified as Moonlight Sonata. The archive’s track lists therefore show something more particular than a conventional extended-remix package: the formats offer different routes into a quieter instrumental world. ^[1]

That difference is easy to miss if the single is remembered only as an unusual entry in a compilation. A compilation supplies a convenient sequence. The original object supplies a context: the other side, the format and the way a listener might have encountered it.

Why a small correction matters

A statement does not become unassailable simply because it appears inside an official release. Equally, finding an error does not make every nearby detail suspect. Here the useful response is precise: identify the claim, compare it with the catalogue record, and correct that claim.

For a fan archive, this is an unusually good reminder that research is not a contest to repeat the most confident sentence. There can be more than one official source, and they may disagree. The responsible story shows readers exactly where the disagreement sits.

A quieter kind of discovery

Our interpretation is that Little 15 becomes more interesting when released from the burden of being an exception. It can be heard as a small, self-contained listening sequence. Play the song and then the instrumental material available on your edition. The shift away from a sung narrative changes the kind of attention the record asks for.

If you own a copy, look at the actual format and catalogue number before comparing it with somebody else’s. That is enough to begin. No claim of extraordinary rarity is needed: the satisfying discovery is that an apparently settled piece of history can be checked, corrected and heard afresh.