Martin Gore of Depeche Mode never wanted to make happy pop songs. This is one reason the group split with Vince Clarke, who ended up being OK. He would play with Yaz and Erasure. Those sound completely different than the Depeche Mode most people know and love.
Gore wanted to make darker and broodier music. He was the driver behind the DM engine as he wrote much of the lyrics and designed much of the structure of the songs. Just as important as vocalist Dave Gahan was, the band simply never would have been without Gore. Thankfully, Gore and Gahan remain just as vibrant today and just as dark.
Perhaps Depeche Mode's most important song was "Enjoy the Silence," and when the creation of the song began, Gore had a different view of how it should go. He wanted something slow and moody, not the danceable bit of magic the track became.
Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" almost turned out completely different
Speaking with the band's BONG magazine in 1998, Gore said he was completely opposed to the direction most of the rest of the band wanted to go with the song. They wanted something a bit more poppy, something Gore was almost always opposed to. The disco beat of the tune was certainly against how he viewed the song.
Gore said, "I was really averse to that at first. “I thought, ‘The song is called "Enjoy the Silence," it’s supposed to be about serenity, and serenity doesn’t go with the disco beat.’"
The band was working with a new producer, Flood. He told Gore, "I said, ‘Why don’t we just copy the rhythm of an old disco classic so we started off doing that. Martin was dubious about the whole idea, so it was a bit like, 'Come on then, prove it to me.' But that was good because what that did was add a real tension..."
Thankfully, Gore allowed the changes to happen and the song became one of the band's most successful. More than that, it was a lead single off the band's best-selling album, Violator. Without "Enjoy the Silence," perhaps many fewer people hear the album, and then those who liked that tuned into the rest of the catalog of Depeche Mode.
The song remains the band's only top-ten hit in the United States (it reached number eight on the Billboard charts). The album reached number seven in the US and number two in the United Kingdom. It has sold over 10 million units globally.