#basildon

Depeche Mode have never quite felt like they have the megastar status their commercial success and songwriting brilliance warrants. For all Dave Gahan's Jesus-posing, bum-wiggling and heroin-soaked dicing with death, and Martin Gore's strange S&M transvestitism, they've still always been those same gawky boys from Basildon. In their early, Vince Clarke-led, electropop days they never quite had the arty cachet of a Eurythmics or Visage, nor the flashy clubbability of Duran Duran. And even as Gore's darker songwriting took over, Clarke's classically-trained replacement Alan Wilder brought in more industrial sounds and Gahan got stubblier and deeper of voice, there remained a gauche, slightly nerdy undercurrent.

None of which stopped them becoming a gargantuan and gloriously bizarre entity. At one point they rivalled U2 for global popularity and Motley Crue for debauchery, yet still felt subversive. They spread a darkly irreligious attitude across heartland America, and remained musically innovative and unintentionally funky enough to command the respect of the godfathers of modern dance music (“They’ve set the standard in what they do,” said Detroit techno don Derrick May back in 1989; “They’re right on time, right in synch, and they can’t even help it.”).

Perhaps, though, it's actually that nerdiness that makes them so powerful, that commands the passions of a legion of misfits from bogglingly different backgrounds across the world. A look at Turner-prize winning artist Jeremy Deller's beautiful documentary on their fans “The Posters Came From The Walls” shows untold moving stories of what they mean to people. They were a symbol of outsider rebellion and self-expression for Russians under Communism, and still are for Iranians under religious law. They provide succour and inspiration for the lonely and unorthodox, not in the rather self-conscious “you are all my children” way of a Marilyn Manson or Lady Gaga, but through their inescapable, rather awkward sincerity. And their influence has rippled through the oddest corners of popular culture – after all, who else could have feasibly been covered by Johnny Cash, The Saturdays, Susan Boyle and Rammstein?

Through it all, their success has been buoyed by a combination of grandiose vision and experimental sound with brilliantly simple songs. Despite a propensity for childishly naff rhymes - “everything counts / in large amounts”; “words are very / unnecessary”; “people are people so why should it be / you and I should get along so aw-ful-ly?” - chief songwriter Gore has always had a knack for pinning down sometimes quite abstract and uncomfortable emotions into basic, memorable forms, and the absolute sincerity of the band's delivery makes them hit home all the harder. No-one else has managed to match their ability to put such strange, emotionally stripped-bare songs into forms that can reach out to such gigantic crowds.

Laughed at by the music press right through the 1980s, and almost destroyed by their own excesses in the 90s, DM remain prophets without honour at home in the UK. You can't imagine them playing the Olympics with Duran Duran and Coldplay, despite matching or exceeding the success of either, nor do you see them knocking about with the Stings and Eltons of this world. And long may they stay that way. Maybe it's galling for them not to be quite accepted into rock aristocracy, but they can be rightfully proud of how deeply etched their music is into ordinary (and extraordinary) people's hearts. Gauche they may be, but they have more claim than most to genuinely be the people's band, as well as being loved and respected by generations of the most exploratory musicians; they are our greatest outsider megastars.

New Life (1981)

Vince Clarke's naïve but inventive Beach Boys harmonies and insectoid synthesisers are still delightfully inexplicable.

Blasphemous Rumours (1984)

Grim existential humour and industrial metal-banging: an unconventional route to global megastardom.

Fly on the Windscreen (Final) (from Black Celebration, 1986)

DM at their most death obsessed – but with a freakishly funky electro groove, which neo-Goth imitators never quite got.

Never Let Me Down Again (1987)

OK the “houses” / “trousers” rhyme is Gore's greatest clanger – yet somehow the stadium-sized drama still works.

Personal Jesus (Acoustic) (1989)

A beautiful stripping bare of the song's bluesy swing long before Johnny Cash did the same.

Policy Of Truth (KLF Trancentral Mix) (1990)

Now practically the biggest band in the world, DM were still weird enough to allow in sheep bleating, Bob Hoskins samples and hypnotic grooves.

Higher Love (from Songs of Faith and Devotion Live, 1993)

The height of drug-ravaged decadence, a voluptuous anthem to being swept away.

Dirt (b-side to “I Feel Loved” single, 2001)

The Stooges's defiance and sleaze brought into the 21st century with techno legend Mark “LFO” Bell producing.

Perfect (from Sound of the Universe, 2009)

It has a cinematic sweep but at the heart of “Perfect” is a lovely, simple pop song about frustration and regret.

Leave in Silence (Claro Intellecto 'The Last Time' Remix) (from Remixes 2: 81-11, 2011)