Martin Gore
Martin Gore
Martin Lee Gore is an English singer-songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, producer, remixer, and DJ. He is a founding member of Depeche Mode and has written the majority of their songs. His work now spans over four decades. Gore's best-known compositions include hits such as "Personal Jesus", "Enjoy the Silence", "Stripped", "It's No Good", "In Your Room", "Strangelove", "I Feel You", "People Are People", "Precious", "A Question of Time", "Policy of Truth", "Everything Counts", "Behind the Wheel", "Shake the Disease", "Never Let...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth23 July 1961
I don't think I ever worry too much about what our target audience is, what we should be releasing. I just write naturally and organically and try to write from the heart.
When I write love songs, people think they're really soppy - but I see love as a consolation for the boredom of life.
When I write a song, I always start on acoustic guitar, because that's a good test of a song, when it's really open and bare. You can often mislead yourself if you start with computers and samples and programming because you can disguise a bad song.
Songwriting is a mysterious art. When I sit down to write a song, the end result should be mysterious and have this dark quality.
I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.
I didn't write songs for a very long time.
When you first sit down to write the first song, until you've maybe got three or four under your belt, it's always, to me, like a mountain to climb. You look at that one blank piece of paper and you think, `God, how many songs do I have to write here?' It always feels like pressure.
I don't know if it's cool to say this anymore, but I grew up listening to Gary Glitter. A majority of his songs were in that shuffle-blues beat, and I think that's probably why I tend to write like that.
God knows why - no pun intended - but every time I write a song, I feel a need to touch on religion.
Anything that I write comes from the soul.
I've not worn a dress since about 1985. It always amazes me how there is still a fascination for it in England. The rest of the world doesn't seem to care. I'm not sure whether they don't remember or whether they've just moved on from it. I was brought up in the glam era.
I even have nephews who make music, my daughter makes music. I don't know what advice to give them these days. It's really a tough industry to break into.
Technology is a bit of a double-edged sword. Used right, it's a wonderful tool, but unfortunately, it makes it easier for a lot of mediocre people to get really crappy ideas out.
It was so exciting to go to the record shop and buy a piece of vinyl and hold it, read the liner notes, look at the pictures. Even the smell of the vinyl.