Cover & Remix · The Devotee Picks
My Favorite Depeche Mode Covers of All Time
Five Devotee picks worth your time. From Greek synth pop sirens to a flight attendant who plays like a concert pianist.
A divide exists among Devotees when it comes to Depeche Mode covers. I have heard plenty say they cannot stand them, that no one can match what the boys of Basildon built. They have a point. Very few bands ever scratch the surface of what Depeche Mode created, and for some Devotees that is reason enough to skip every cover that gets uploaded to YouTube.
I am not in that camp. For me, a great Depeche Mode cover is the next best thing to a new Depeche Mode song, and we never know how many of those are still coming. So when a cover lands, when someone genuinely understands the song they are reaching for and finds something new in it, I want to hear it.
Here are five that earned their place. In no particular order.
Cover One
Marsheaux
Now This Is Fun
This is the only cover song I genuinely prefer to the original, and that is a bold thing for a Devotee to admit. Marsheaux is a Greek synth-pop duo that formed in 1993. Their version of Now This Is Fun appears on their 2017 LP Get the Balance Right, an album-length tribute to Depeche Mode's 1983 Construction Time Again.
Marianthi Melitsi and Sophie Sarigiannidou's vocals on this track are sirens calling Odysseus's men down into the depths. Their version captures the soothing and melancholic tones that Depeche Mode is known for, and somehow finds a register the original never quite reached. Every time I play it I want to play it again.
Cover Two
Nerd Revolt
Photographic
This is the video I never knew I always wanted for a true Depeche Mode classic. At Rock am Ring 2006, Martin Gore told an ecstatic crowd that Photographic was the first song Depeche Mode ever recorded. Nerd Revolt understood the assignment. Their version captures the urgency and longing of the original and the visuals carry you back to the flashing lights of dark clubs that no longer exist.
The vocals and the styling are a tribute to the analogue era reaching forward into the digital one. That tension, between what the song was when it was new and what it sounds like decades later, is exactly what a great cover should make you feel.
Cover Three
Rhiannon Mair
Strangelove
This original take on a one-of-a-kind song was made when vampires and werewolves were dominating popular fiction in the US. Team Edward for the record. Covering Strangelove is not for the faint of heart. Rhiannon Mair goes after it with fire and fury, and you can almost feel the heat coming off her vocal.
The roses covered in oil feel like a deliberate Concrete Blonde tribute, and her delivery on the central refrain about pain offered and refused is a thing of sheer beauty. This is what it sounds like when a singer understands not just the words of a song but the weather inside it.
Cover Four
Shaka Ponk
Personal Jesus
Who does not love watching a band rock out in their garage or attic. Shaka Ponk is a French synth and electric rock band that formed in 2000, and they have other covers worth chasing down once you finish this one. Their Kids in America and Smells Like Teen Spirit are both worth your time.
Their take on one of Depeche Mode's most popular club songs is modest in its setting and audacious in its delivery. Over four million people have watched it on YouTube, and every time I do, I am reminded why this is the song Devotees keep reaching for faith with.
Cover Five
Yana Chernysheva
Enjoy the Silence
Yana Chernysheva's Instagram bio describes her as a flight attendant in the air and a composer on the ground, working in electronica and neoclassical. What I can tell you is this is the best piano solo cover of a Depeche Mode song I have ever heard.
Enjoy the Silence is Depeche Mode's most popular song out of their entire catalog, and this version is far and away one of the most affecting interpretations of it I have come across. It captures the dichotomy of melancholy and passion in one stroke. It opens by reminding you that Depeche Mode sounds best when you are listening with someone you love, and it ends by tugging at every string in your chest.
Five covers. Five different takes on what it means to step inside a Depeche Mode song and find something the original was hiding. If you have a cover or remix you think belongs on a list like this, the contact page is open.