While Depeche Mode has a new single, “Ghosts Again,” and a forthcoming album, Memento Mori, one of their classic hits, “Never Let Me Down Again,” has been enjoying new life thanks to its inclusion in the hit HBO series The Last of Us — a phenomenon that the band says they never expected.
The original version of the 1987 Depeche classic was used in the first episode of The Last of Us, and a haunting cover version by Jessica Mazin was included in episode six. Streams of the original song in the U.S. rose more than 220% after that first episode, which used the song as part of the plot: The characters play tracks from the ’80s over the radio as code to indicate trouble.
“That was nuts,” singer Dave Gahan tells NME. “We didn’t expect that. It’s like it’s our time again and you can feel it in the air.”
He adds, “It’s amusing to me, because we’ve f***ing worked hard and we’re getting this weird recognition again of, ‘This band are important and cool and they deserve to be here.’”
Guitarist/keyboardist and singer Martin Gore notes, “It’s incredible that we got that boost. We’re fortunate in that we seem to attract a young audience anyway. With each record there are 20-year-olds getting into it.”
“But that’s just one track,” he continues. “I hope that anyone who discovered that song would be interested to get into everything else we’ve done.”
They can start with Memento Mori, which comes out March 24. Gahan tells NME the title is Latin for “Remember you must die” — fitting, perhaps, since it’s their first album since the 2022 death of founding member Andy Fletcher.
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