‘Cover Me’: The story of Depeche Mode’s sci-fi odyssey
Basildon synth stalwarts Depeche Mode have grappled with their social conscience a lot earlier than you might remember. Alongside principal songwriter Martin Gore’s thematic obsessions with guilt, pain, and plenty of sex, the creative leap forward the group took in the tougher, industrial-clanged third LP Construction Time Again also marked a maturity in their lyrical focus, tackling the cesspool of 1980s’ ‘greed is good’ mantra on their biggest hit yet ‘Everything Counts’.
A mordant commentary on the state of the world rears its head sporadically from then on, be it perverse tabloid juxtapositions on the crunchy ‘New Dress’ or God’s cruel sense of humour on ‘Blasphemous Rumours’.
A troubled analysis of political failure reached its apex in 2017’s Spirit. After being namechecked by white supremacist Richard Spencer outside that year’s Conservative Political Action Conference as “the official band of the alt-right”, albeit in jest, Depeche Mode swiftly communicated their objection clearly. “What’s dangerous about someone like Richard Spencer is, first of all, he’s a c*nt—and he’s a very educated c*nt, and that’s the scariest kind of all” frontman Dave Gahan told Billboard.
He added: “I think over the years there’s been a number of times when things of ours have been misinterpreted—either our imagery, or something where people are not quite reading between the lines.”
Born from the band’s dissatisfaction with the political failure spinning the world into chaos and a need to dispel any possible ambiguity regarding their values, Spirit pursued a more frank and direct approach to the weighty themes explored, donning Karl Marx beards on lead single ‘Where’s the Revolution’s Anton Corbijn-directed video, or the explicit lyrical attack on climate killing capitalism and regressive social decline on ‘The Worst Crime’ and ‘Going Backwards’.
A later dynamic in Depeche Mode’s creative process is Gahan’s growing confidence as a songwriter. Long the voice for Gore’s lyrics, a string of solo albums in the 2000s set the stage for Gahan penning three of Playing the Angel‘s tracks, including single ‘Suffer Well’. Credited on nearly half of Spirit‘s songs, including their first ‘Gore-Gahan’ piece, the LP’s third single proved Gahan’s most assured yet.
Adopting a sci-fi approach to ‘Cover Me’, Gahan injects some Soulsavers digital blues into the cut’s dusky, evocative introspection on cosmic dissatisfaction: “It’s about a person who travels to another planet only to find that, much to his dismay, it’s exactly the same as Earth,” he told Rolling Stone. “It’s a different planet but the same. He really can’t get away from himself. If he wants things to change, he’s going to have to implement it.”
The austere video aids its ruminative meditation, Gahan dressed as an astronaut and navigating the lonely urbane streets of an unfamiliar planet, swapping ‘Enjoy the Silence’s crown and deckchair for a spacesuit in a similar contemplative trawl through our lonely blue rock when keyboard programmer Matrixcman’s sequencers pulse in, the song’s concluding call to arms is well realised, as Gahan observes Earth from his lonely spaceship. ‘Cover Me’ is a fantastic late-Depeche cut which presents a fresh conceptual approach to Mode’s songbook that only Gahan could bring.
