|
Depeche Mode about the album's songs
"Going Backwards"
Dave Gahan: "If we want things to change, a revolution, we need to talk about it and about caring about what goes on in the world. It doesn't seem the way things are in London. We seem to be going in another direction, and I think Martin felt like he needed to express that with 'Going Backwards'."
Martin Gore: "An album starts taking shape, for me, really, when you have about four songs together, and we had gone down a cynical path. And I thought, "Okay well, maybe I just gotta go with this." Well as I said, it was definitely one of the first songs that I had written, and I think it was actually one of the first songs that we had started working on in the studio. And I think that from an early point we all deep down knew that it would be the first track on the album, so it was an important track. Even though we never regarded it as a single or anything like that, it was more of a statement." "Yes, but that's just a reason for decay. I have long believed that new technologies would bring the world together — the world would be united by them. We were all enthusiastic about the Arab Spring, when people started organising themselves with social media and fought for their freedom. But then everything went wrong: the Middle East seems to be falling apart."
Andy Fletcher: "I think it would be 'Going Backwards'. I don't know why. I've never really given it enough attention, because I do like 'Cover Me' as well, but we open our set with 'Backwards', and it really sounds good."
"Where's The Revolution"
Dave Gahan: "It always felt like, right from when I heard the demo of 'Where's The Revolution', it seemed like the obvious single. It's kind of got this hook. But what was interesting to me about it was the lyrical content. I liked the way the songs kind of points the finger at everybody else and asking the question 'Where is it?' And it also slides into the title of the album, "Spirit". To me, that revolution comes from within. I don't know if Martin wrote the song with that in mind, but I heard the song this way, like, 'Where is the revolution?' It comes from each of us, it comes from within, it takes guts, it's like a call to arms or something. And it's also scattered with this sort of imagery of all these sort of failed idealistic Marxism, the big business, the band, all these ideas of these things that we follow and latch ourselves onto, but we know what's right within. One of the essences in life is choice: we do have a choice in what we do in the end, and they can be bad choices." "Martin wrote this song in a very sarcastic, English way."
Martin Gore: "It's always good if you have a track that kind of sums up the album, and it's even better if that song is hymnistic, and it's kind of powerful. So fortunately this time around we had 'Where's The Revolution'. We felt that was a great statement to make and should definitely be the first track to be released to bring us back with a statement. I think that if the album had been released months ago, we probably would have gone with that as the first single, because it is representative and powerful like I said." "It was one of the first songs that I wrote for the album Spirit that kind of started this social commentary." "'Where's The Revolution' was written at some point in 2015. I think, there was a sense of things going wrong and the world wasn't in a great place then. That was pre-Brexit, but you know there were awful problems going on. The Syrian crisis had been dragging on for years... I live in America, and around that time there were blacks getting shot on a kind of weekly basis by the police and rioting, you know — the whole Middle East, is just a big mess. I can't believe the West has sat back and watched Syria get worse and worse and worse. It's a very difficult problem to solve, especially when the Russians and the rest of the world are on different pages, but you know on a humanitarian level it's just — I can't believe people can sit back and let it happen."
"The Worst Crime"
Dave Gahan: "Actually, this is one of my favorite songs on the album Spirit. It has a beautiful melody, but lyrically it's pretty slamming the way we divide each other, you know, and racial divides and kind of calling out to really question that, to kind of check yourself, me included, everybody else included. Like, where do you really stand? You know, what are the choices you're really making? Do you really love thy neighbor, all that kind of stuff? And are you willing to accept the differences? We just seem to be slipping backwards." "The lyrics to 'Poison Heart' are more of an internal dialogue, but 'Worst Crime' is looking outward. It's bringing about the change. You've got to do something different or act differently. We can all talk about whatever is going on until we're blue in the face but you have to take real action, and sometimes we don't know what that looks like. Individually, I believe people are inherently good, but we're really distorted by the information we get and we act out on that information out of fear." "'Worst Crime' played out like I wanted it to get out and I think there's just something beautiful about that song. It's about a fear of being different, and "I will go with that, prove me right, I'm on the right side." That song may appear in a very sad way, but lyrically it really spoke to me. I really wanted to do that song justice, and I felt like that song really came out well."
Martin Gore: "Usually I don't talk about the songs too much but I will about this one a little bit. It's metaphorical and about climate change and us destroying the world, and how we are all guilty... so the lynching is us, we are all being lynched." ""The Worst Crime" wasn't written for Brexit at all. For me, it's a song about humanity hanging itself and the worst crime being the destruction of the planet, because there are so many crimes that we're committing on a daily basis, but this is the worst crime because we are not just doing it to ourselves but we're also doing it to future generations. And, like I say, we've had so much time to implement things, to put things right." "Normally I do not speak about my songs, but for this one I will make an exception. 'The Worst Crime' is about the destruction of the environment. We are not only destroying it for those of us who live in the present. We are condemning the planet and the next generations, our children and our grandchildren. It seems simple to implement some measures to remedy it. However, we have an idiot like Trump in power, who does not even believe that this destruction is real. I cannot believe that some people think that this is not real. What's more, what I believe is that they purposely ignore that this is happening."
"Scum"
Martin Gore: "During interviews, quite a few people asked me, "Who made you that angry? Who is that about?" It would really take away the power of the song if I would just tell you, "I wrote about this person", because it's better for a listener to listen to it and imagine, because imagination is far more powerful." "I like 'Scum' particularly because it's very different for us. Quite aggressive, but it's also got a real kind of sleazy groove to it. There's something very unusual for us about that song."
Dave Gahan: "When I first heard that song, when Martin gave me his demo, I just couldn't wait to get my teeth into it. That's right up my street. It's punchy, and it's rant. He's pretty angry at someone, I think." "There are songs that are quite literal on the album. "Scum" for instance, it was a lot of fun recording that song and singing it. Great lyric. But to me, I internalize that: "Hey scum, hey scum, what have you ever done for anyone?" I immediately take that in, and I ask myself that question. That's how I perform that song... really, it's from my own fear, like, "What the f--k have I ever done? And what am I doing? Am I really helping those around me that are less fortunate? Do I really care?" I don't know."
Andy Fletcher: "I really like 'Scum', it has the weirdest rhythm. In fact we're not playing it live — we're not sure if it can be played live. It's some weird beat." "I didn't personally work with the vocals at all during the album but in reference to Scum, I'm pretty sure Martin's original demo had heavily distorted vocals on it. So that would explain why Dave's vocals had the same treatment on that particular tune."
"You Move"
Dave Gahan: "It was a weird song. Martin had sent me this rhythm track that was really odd, and he said "I don't know what to do with this, maybe you can have a go at doing something to it." So I was baffled at first, but it almost felt like he had sent me an incredible challenge, because it has such a weird time signature and weird sounds. And there wasn't a lot of chord structure to it that I could really latch onto. So I let it just simmer and I left it alone, and I was like "I don't know, this is like a jigsaw puzzle." But then one night I was in bed and I suddenly remembered this rhythm playing that Martin had sent me, and I suddenly got this hookline into my head, 'I like the way you move'. And there was something about what he had sent me too. I just couldn't get it out of my head, so I got out and kind of threw something into my iPhone. And the next day I went into my studio and I kind of formulated my idea into a melody and this lyric came out. I don't really know why. Sometimes music is like that: you respond to something, it's call and response, somehow. But I thought it's really interesting, us doing a little collaboration too. I hope that in the future we can do more of that. I'm certainly open to the idea of Martin sending me things. He's a great songwriter, and if he comes with a finished song and gives it to me, I think there's plenty of room for us to maybe explore it too. I'd quite like that, that's definitely a taste of what could come." "I was happy that [Martin released MG, in 2015. When we finished making Delta Machine, there was a number of bits and pieces left over that we haven't developed into songs, or... they are instrumentals. And I think that Martin sort of got the idea then that maybe he was gonna go away and produce more of an instrumental album-type album, more sort of filmic in some ways. I remember when I first heard it, a few of them I was like "Oh, I remember that was something you played me, a part of it." I really liked a couple of things: I liked 'Europa Hymn' especially, the first piece which set the whole thing up. I liked the way it moved. Hence a song later on that became on this album was with a hookline "I like the way you move". I wrote that down — I mean, Martin doesn't know this — but I had written that down, and when Martin sent me an instrumental piece which became "Move", which was really odd, rhythmically. At first I was like "Why did he send me this?" He said, "Look, maybe I don't know what to do with this, maybe you can come up with a vocal melody, and some lyrics." It stayed with me for a bit, and then I was looking through some of my old bits and pieces on my phone, some things where I had thrown down a phrase or something, something that had come in my head, and that line came up "I like the way you move". That tied me into actually that piece that he did on his instrumental record 'Europa Hymn'." "It is about one person seeing another person and respecting and seeing the moves, but also knowing that: "You're not gonna get me like that. You're gonna have to do more than that. I'm tempted. I like the way you move." And it's a bit sarcastic, and it's also like at the end of a relationship that maybe has worked in a way for a long time in a certain way, but it needs to change."
Martin Gore: "So far, writing songs together with Dave has worked well. I think that we both like to work alone. I had this vague idea for a song 'You Move' and I sent him a sound file. He then added text and vocals and sent the file back to me, so that I could complete the song."
"Cover Me"
Dave Gahan: "I thought that a big surprise for me was how 'Cover Me' ended up being. I heard that song when that song was written by myself, Pete and Christian, who have been performing live with us next to twenty years. So they had some ideas that they wanted me to write to, and it ended up being 'Cover Me'. And I always heard this idea of the song being in two halves: one half is this sort of lyrical idea, and the other song being something kind of another world. For me, it sounds really well on the album. The song is here and you kind of go in a spaceship and go somewhere else. And that was kind of the idea behind the song. It came out really well, I was really pleased — I think everybody was in the end. I was surprised how well that came out. Sometimes you are just dreading the demos. If you are in a band, and you bring in the demos, and you try to get them into it, you say "Look, this is a demo. I want us all to collectively work on this, and let's see where it goes." It's sometimes really difficult to have another person to hear what you hear and you can't really explain it. But that one definitely got everyone involved, and it went off. And Martin got very involved, we sat down at the piano, we worked on some of the lyrical ideas as well as well as the melody... maybe not so much the melody but some of the chords. And Martin is great with that, he would sit at the piano and get into the song as well, and he'd really kind of give his best. And he did, I think, on that song." "I wanted 'Cover Me' to be very cinematic, and I had this sort of idea of us finally destroying this beautiful planet that we live on. Hence the northern lights: it's just one in many millions of beautiful things... the oceans, just things that we take for granted. And the "Northern lights" was just a metaphor that I wanted to use, because I did once experience actually being there while that was happening, way up north in Scandinavia. Yeah it's quite an emotional experience, and it's also out of the world somehow, quite spiritual, and moving, moving to the point of tears, the beauty of something happening in our universe. And so I had this idea at that time, a little lyrical idea, not really a melody. But anyway, I came back to that, and that became that song. And I also saw the song in two halves, where the second half was where we are finally leaving or something. This person or whoever it is, who I live vicariously through, leaves the planet, only to find another planet that is exactly the same as ours, and he has this horrible feeling of like, "Oh wow, it's not the planet, it's me, I am doing this. I'm destroying this beautiful world that I live in. And that can be just an emotional relationship that you have with another person, or trying to be having a relationship with another person that you can't quite get to because you just can't. And that, for me, is quite often where I find myself with music and songs: I am quite often this other person. Of course it's me, but I can live vicariously through this performer, this guy that I've created, which is me, but a character. And throughout songs and films and books and stuff like that, that's where I get lost. With 'Cover Me', the song that was coming to mind a lot, the feeling of the song that I wanted to get on this, and it's a totally different kind of song, but the feeling that I wanted to get was like Bowie's song 'Life On Mars', where the second half of the song seems to go to another place, or 'Space Odyssey', that kind of feeling. It opens up for you, the listener, to just be able to go off in their own dreams and ideas." "I'm like, 'What the fuck do you know? I never question your songs, Martin, I just sing them!'"
Martin Gore: "The demo was quite good, but I think that in the studio we really took it on and made it into something that was even better. And the bit at the end, that really long instrumental piece, did not exist before. So I think that that has made that song into something that was much better than the demo, even though the demo was quite good." "The demo was quite good, but I think that in the studio we really took it on and made it into something that was even better. And the bit at the end, that really long instrumental piece, did not exist before. So I think that that has made that song into something that was much better than the demo, even though the demo was quite good."
"Eternal"
Martin Gore: "I actually like 'Eternal' out of all the songs on Spirit because it's weird. (Laughs) It was written about my daughter, who's now one. It's quite dark and bleak, and it talks about a mushroom cloud rising and radiation falling. The instrumentation is really strange and quite experimental and really something unlike anything we've done for a while." "Being a father is a great influence. One of the songs on the album is called "Eternal" and it's dedicated to one of my daughters who is now 2 years old. Maybe it's not the most positive song for a girl that age. But maybe when she grows up, she'll be proud of this composition (laughs). My daughters and my son give me a lot of love. They always motivate me." "Maybe you are right that some of our work in the past has been more experimental, but I think if you listen to, like, 'Eternal' for instance on this album, which for me sounds more like an interlude, I think it's quite experimental."
"Poison Heart"
Dave Gahan: "Christian Eigner and Peter Gordeno sent me this guitar line, and it had a bit of a Muscle Shoals vibe. It was a very different feel and I got this melody in my head. Martin Gore is not a man of many words when it comes to others' songs but he called 'Poison Heart' the best song I had ever written. It's not intended to be a breakup song. I was watching the news on TV and I was writing through my own inability to really relate to another human being. There must be something wrong with me, poison in my heart or whatever. So it was fun to play with that imagery, and it became more worldly — greed and lust and wanting what you want when you want it and nothing else matters. So I was breaking up with myself — trying to evolve, trying to break up with old ideas that I think are working for me but are not in actuality. Fortunately, that's not my relationship with my wife. 'Poison Heart' complements another song on the album called 'The Worst Crime'. The lyrics to 'Poison Heart' are more of an internal dialogue, but 'Worst Crime' is looking outward. Christian Eigner and Peter Gordeno sent me this guitar line, and it had a bit of a Muscle Shoals vibe. It was a very different feel and I got this melody in my head. Martin Gore is not a man of many words when it comes to others' songs but he called 'Poison Heart' the best song I had ever written. It's not intended to be a breakup song. I was watching the news on TV and I was writing through my own inability to really relate to another human being. There must be something wrong with me, poison in my heart or whatever. So it was fun to play with that imagery, and it became more worldly — greed and lust and wanting what you want when you want it and nothing else matters. So I was breaking up with myself — trying to evolve, trying to break up with old ideas that I think are working for me but are not in actuality. Fortunately, that's not my relationship with my wife. 'Poison Heart' complements another song on the album called 'The Worst Crime'. The lyrics to 'Poison Heart' are more of an internal dialogue, but 'Worst Crime' is looking outward."
"So Much Love"
Dave Gahan: "It's like we have so much love here, we really do, but we're afraid to use it and access it. It's the old John Lennon thing, like, 'love and peace, man.' 'So Much Love' also reminds me of early electronic stuff, like Tuxedomoon and Cabaret Voltaire, who did kind of punky, distorted songs." "Well, funnily enough, there was one tracklisting on the album where 'So Much Love' was the final song. I did feel like it should be the final song on the album. And Martin felt that we should end the album in a different way, so I was pretty much outvoted. And that's the way it goes, we are a democracy, it doesn't mean I have to be right. I understand what you are saying because I felt that the songs, all the songs on the album, are all leading in a certain direction, and I felt like this was the song that says we all still have so much love in us. Let's have some hopefulness at the end of this dark tunnel. But it worked: it would always have worked no matter where it is on the album."
Martin Gore: "The very last song that I wrote for the album Spirit was 'So Much Love', because I felt that I had to write something positive. I felt that I had to say that, with all this going, it doesn't matter what you do to me, there is still a lot of love in me." "Sounds really influence the composition of a song. An example of this would be the song 'So Much Love'. At the beginning there was a driving main sound, which I programmed on a Eurorack synthesizer. Ultimately it is this sound that helped the track to its somewhat punky feel." "One of the suggestions was for us to finish the album on that song, but it didn't really work. It worked thematically: it would have been great. But it was the only really fast song that we had. And to end on that, people would have to get through all the slow songs before getting to, you know, faster than, I don't know what it is, 110 BPM or something."
"Poorman"
Dave Gahan: "We recorded Spirit during the 2016 United States presidential election campaign. We were recording during the time when Brexit was happening and when we finally got the news. A lot of change, a lot of "Really?"-type stuff happening. But it's been going all around the world, and this separatism, "I've got to keep mine, and get out of my way," and all the stuff we've been hearing for years about the one percent — "When are we going to see it trickle down?" It comes up in 'Poorman' on this album."
Martin Gore: "'Poor Man' people could say, 'OK, how could you say that as a rich man? But I agree in paying taxes and I would be quite happy to pay higher taxes. I think huge multi-national corporations should be paying tax and they should be paying large amounts of tax; I don't think it's right to do a deal with a country and not pay tax." "I think 'Poorman' is definitely influenced by the blues, but I think in general this album is less "blues" than Delta Machine. Maybe there's something "bluesy" in the way we write the lyrics."
"Fail"
Dave Gahan: "That song 'Fail' is quite pessimistic, but there's also one phrase which it ends on where it kind of says 'Yes, we're fucked, but at the same time it also gives us — at the end — this hope'. And I also think 'Fail' is an interesting song because for me, the heart of it is actually in the melody. It's quite an uplifting melody. When you get to the end of the song, I always felt like, melodically, it was a complete contrast to the lyrical content."
Martin Gore: "I think that if you ask each of the members of the band why we named the album "Spirit", they would give you a different reason. But for me, it was kind of like that, because there's a line in the song 'Fail' that says "our spirit is gone". And I'm hoping that by pointing out that humanity is kind of gone astray, lost its way, that it helps us to find that path again. That it helps us find out spirit again." "It is indeed the first case that we use the f-word. I find it appropriate, because in the last song it once again underlines the dark mood on 'Spirit'. When I began writing songs at the end of 2015 and early 2016, it felt to me as if the world was slowly getting doomed. I just had to make it a theme. And even though I did not think that Trump would become president, you could see how the Trump train was slowly taking up speed and was dragging the whole election campaign into the dirt. At the same time, you saw and see these horrible images from Syria every day, that no one seems to care about anymore. No wonder I got a gloomy look at the world and concluded: "We're fucked"? A little side-note: A young artist from Australia is working on a piece of art, in which she is drawing the words "we", "are", and "fucked" in sign language. It's a Christmas gift from my wife. I have yet to ask her, but I also think it would make a great design for a T-shirt." "The line 'oh, we're fucked' sums up the album in a way. The good thing about it is the lyrics might be depressing but the music is so pretty. Once the lyrics stop it ends on this nice lilting gentle piece of music. That's the little bit of hope."
|
