Never Let Me Down Again

Written by Gore and arranged by Wilder, it was recorded between Studio Guillaume Tell in Paris and Konk Studios in London, and mixed at Puk in Denmark. Gore's guitar riff was filtered through an ARP 2600 and recorded at Puk. The snare is sampled from Led Zeppelin's When the Levee Breaks, the tom-tom came from the band's own Stripped, and a sample from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana is in the track. The coda refers to Soft Cell's Torch. Wilder called it his favorite song on the album and his second favorite Depeche Mode song.

Gore said in 1987 that the song was not about relationships but about fleeing from reality and the harsh awakening afterwards, whether through drugs, alcohol or anything else. It was released on 24 August 1987 and reached number 22 in the UK. The band have played it on every tour since. In the concert film 101, the crowd at the Rose Bowl copies Gahan's arm waving near the end, which a German magazine likened to wind in a cornfield. The Smashing Pumpkins covered it in 1994, and Gahan said he thought it was a lot better than the original. The song was used in The Last of Us and in Euphoria, and streams tripled overnight after The Last of Us premiere.