‘Only You’: The Vince Clarke song that Depeche Mode turned down
Before Vince Clarke left Depeche Mode, he made a conscious effort to make sure that he did so without anything turning sour. He even penned a new song for the band in an attempt to leave on good terms. However, the song – titled ‘Only You’ – was firmly rejected by the remaining members in favour of an alternative track written by Martin Gore when he was just 16 years old.
During his time with Depeche Mode, Clarke had written a number of high-performing singles, including ‘Dreaming of Me’, ‘New Life’, and ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’. Through these singles, the band’s signature sound was firmly established as slick, synthesized electropop, lacking the darker, more gritty rock sensibilities that would come to infiltrate their work later on.
In fact, when Clarke left the band, there were many rumours that those darker senses had put him off and that the direction the other members wanted to embark on wasn’t really Clarke’s bag. Clarke also recognised that, at the time, they were all very young, and he himself didn’t really enjoy the more public aspects of success, which made him frequently butt heads with the others.
However, after Clarke’s departure, the band sought to recreate their sound and crackdown on their industry impact, getting to work on a new album A Broken Frame. It would give the band their first taste of what life would be like as a trio.
While Depeche Mode were invigorated by the new set-up of the group, so too was Vince Clarke, who in his new Yazoo counterpart Alison Moyet, had found a soulful voice he thought perfect for his songs. He told Songfacts in 2010: “One of the big reasons I asked Alison to sing ‘Only You’ was because I felt that it was a ballad that needed someone with a soulful voice. And it wasn’t like I thought to myself, ‘Okay, you have a chance to marry electronics with song.’ It just turned out that way, and it happened Alison had a great voice, and it worked really well.”
“The first time I heard her sing, she was in a punk band called the Vandals,” Clarke recalled. “And my best friend, Rob, he was the guitarist for the Vandals, and they played at one of the local pubs. And then I saw her a couple of times after that. She sang for an R&B band. So when I finally had her do this demo with me, I knew she had a great voice.”
With Clarke’s vision now being enacted by the perfect vocalist, the songwriter has since claimed ‘Only You’ to be among some of his best work, telling the publication: “‘Only You’ I’m very proud of, because it almost makes sense lyrically. (laughs) And lots of people seem to like that song, so that would be one of my favourites. I’ve tried to write lyrics that perhaps express the way I feel sometimes. I’ve struggled with that feeling. I find it easier to write lyrics about someone else’s situation other than my own.”
Whether Clarke did or didn’t officially offer up the song to Depeche Mode is a matter of confusion for everyone, including the songwriter. In 1987, with No1 Magazine he shared: “It took over a year for the bad feeling to die down, and there was a rivalry between them and Yazoo. I’d offered them ‘Only You’, and when Yazoo had a hit with it, that didn’t help much.”
However, more recently speaking with SVT in 2018, Clarke denied this and noted: “No. No that’s not true [that I have presented ‘Only You’ to Depeche Mode]. There was another song that I had written which was never released which I feel I may have played to them, but it wasn’t ‘Only You’.”
It may have been rejected by Depeche Mode in favour of a Martin Gore hit or it may have simply been held back by the songwriter for a better fit, but Vince Clarke found the perfect place for a song he now considers to be his favourite.
