Dave Gahan picks his favourite songs of all time
Dave Gahan has never been a prolific songwriter, with his bandmate Martin Gore taking up the bulk of responsibilities instead for Depeche Mode. Outside of the group, Gahan has predominantly used his solo career to flex his songwriting muscles, but he’s also used it as a vehicle to pay tribute to his heroes.
Gahan decided to exclusively record covers in 2021 for his third album with his side-project The Soulsavers. Speaking to The Guardian, the Depeche Mode frontman detailed why he’d already put in the hard yards to prepare himself for making a covers album.
“I’ve been singing Martin [Gore] ‘s songs [in Depeche Mode] for 40 years, so I’ve already been doing my homework [laughs]. Over the years – not right from the beginning – that has become a thing where I hear the song, I hear Martin’s words, his melodies and then I’ll work with the song before I go back the next day with a suggested key change or tempo or arrangement or whatever,” he said about the band’s creative process.
The album was appropriately titled, Imposter and allowed Gahan to add his own spin to some of his all-time favourite tracks, including takes from Bob Dylan and Neil Young. However, the most surprising admission on the record is a cover of ‘Smile’, which Charlie Chaplin co-wrote for his film Modern Times and Nat King Cole later added lyrics to.
Remarkably, Chaplin is one of Gahan’s ultimate heroes, with him telling the New Zealand publication, RNZ: “To me, Charlie Chaplin was the ultimate imposter. When I was a little kid I was obsessed with him for a little while. I used to watch him and his expressions. He could do it all and he was like the ultimate performer, and he didn’t use any words.”
He continued: “I still to this day couldn’t tell you much about the guy at all but that did not really matter when it came to his universal appeal. We identified with Charlie Chaplin. We all identify with that person.”
Interestingly, Gahan chose to take on ‘Not Dark Yet’, an unlikely pick from Dylan’s canon and featured on his 1997 album, Time Out Of Mind. Explaining why he chose the track, the singer told Forbes: “Dylan is one that you gotta choose really carefully. And also he was probably the most difficult to get out of my mind the way that Dylan phrases and the way that he interprets his own songs in that very kind of snarky way.”
On the record, Gahan also elected to take on PJ Harvey’s ‘The Desperate Kingdom Of Love’, and Neil Young’s ‘A Man Needs A Maid’. Additionally, both artists in question contacted him to share their delight about his take. “Yeah, we do get some feedback from it. PJ Harvey and Neil Young actually, and from the Dylan camp as well. We got the approval, we got the, ‘Yeah. Wow, great version. Great interpretation.’ So that was very nice,” he explained.
Other notable tracks that Gahan considers favourites and included on the release are ‘Always On My Mind’, which Elvis Presley popularised, and Mark Lanegan’s ‘Strange Religion’.
Taken together, the songs Gahan gravitates toward paint a revealing portrait of his sensibilities. There is a thread of melancholy running through Dylan’s ‘Not Dark Yet’, Neil Young’s ‘A Man Needs A Maid’, and even Chaplin’s ‘Smile’, all of them wrestling with vulnerability beneath composed exteriors. They are not bombastic showpieces, but inward-looking meditations on frailty, doubt, and endurance, themes that have long hovered around Gahan’s own public narrative.
For a singer who has spent decades interpreting Martin Gore’s introspective writing, it makes sense that he would be drawn to material steeped in quiet emotional weight. Gahan may not be Depeche Mode’s primary songwriter, but his voice has always been the conduit for feeling. The songs he chooses to sing on his own time suggest a performer less interested in spectacle than in sincerity, someone who recognises a shared humanity in the writers he admires.
See the tracklist for the carefully curated collection below, composed of songs he couldn’t live without.
Dave Gahan’s favourite songs:
- James Carr – ‘The Dark End Of The Street’
- Mark Lanegan – ‘Strange Religion’
- Eartha Kitt – ‘Lilac Wine’
- Elmore James – ‘I Held My Baby Last Night’
- Neil Young – ‘A Man Needs A Maid’
- Cat Power – ‘Metal Heart’
- Rowland S. Howard – ‘Shut Me Down’
- Gene Clark – ‘Where My Love Lies Asleep’
- Nat King Cole – ‘Smile’
- PJ Harvey – ‘The Desperate Kingdom Of Love’
- Bob Dylan – ‘Not Dark Yet’
- Gwen McRae ‘Always On My Mind’
