Never Let Me Down Again

Martin Gore played the heavily treated guitar riff that set "Never Let Me Down Again" apart from Depeche Mode's earlier records. Although the band was primarily known as an all-synth outfit, Gore's guitar work had appeared as far back as their 1982 single "Get the Balance Right!", and here his simple, repetitive riffs were filtered through an ARP 2600 synthesiser and recorded at Puk Recording Studios in Gjerlev, Denmark. The guitar intro itself was a happy accident: producer David Bascombe explained that the sampled guitar simply ran on over the count-in by mistake, but everyone agreed it sounded great and it stayed.

The track was recorded in late 1986 between Studio Guillaume Tell in Paris and Konk Studios in London, with final mixing at Puk. Written by Gore and arranged by Alan Wilder, it drew on a "library" of samples the band and Bascombe brought to the sessions. The snare came from "When the Levee Breaks" by Led Zeppelin and needed augmenting because the original audio was too low-fidelity, while the tom-tom sound was reused from the band's own single "Stripped". A sample from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana was incorporated as well.

Gore described the lyrics as being about the concept of fleeing from reality and the evil awakening afterwards, whether through drugs, alcohol or anything else. Wilder and Bascombe disagreed over the single mix, with Bascombe overruling Wilder's edits, though Bascombe later admitted Wilder had probably been right. The single stalled at number 22 in the UK.