Happy Anniversary: Depeche Mode, “Get the Balance Right!”

34 years ago today, Depeche Mode released their seventh single, a non-LP track which was also the band’s first single to feature Alan Wilder as an official member.

Recorded in December 1982 at London’s Blackwing Studios, “Get the Balance Right!” was a Martin Gore composition, one which was sung by Dave Gahan. You wouldn’t know this from the song’s video, however, as the opening lines of the song are actually lip-synched by Wilder. If you’ve ever heard the rumor that the reason for this decision wasn’t an artistic one but, rather, simply because no one in the band could bring themselves to tell director Kevin Hewitt that Wilder wasn’t actually the lead singer, you’ll be pleased to know that this is completely true.

“As an indication of our naivety, we were too embarrassed to point out this mistake,” Wilder confirmed in Jonathan Miller’s Stripped: Depeche Mode. “Consequently, the final cut of the promo remains this way today.”

Wilder also confirmed to Miller that “Get the Balance Right!” was the first time the band had actually concentrated on producing a dance 12” for one of their songs.

“Although remixes had been made for previous releases, this one was very much geared towards the clubs,” said Wilder. “At that time, Mode tracks were always recorded with the LP version in mind. From there, we would either edit down for a 7” version or expand for a 12”. To make a 12” involved running off differently mixed sections [of a song] onto two-track [stereo] tape until we had enough pieces to edit the new version together. The tape editing process was much more limiting and took longer than current digital methods. The mere fact that it was much harder work to create a totally different and new version of a song probably contributed to the style of those early mixes and accounts for a lot of their charm. They were usually thrown together fairly quickly with time running out at the end of a mixing session.”

The aforementioned charm won over American dance clubs, with “Get the Balance Right!” hitting #31 on Billboard’s Dance Singles chart, but the song failed to crack the Hot 100. It did, however, make it to #13 on the UK Singles chart, which made it half a dozen consecutive top-20 hits for Depeche Mode. Alas, that wasn’t enough to earn the song a spot on the band’s next album: when CONSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN emerged in August 1983, “Get the Balance Right!” was nowhere to be found. Thankfully, it did end up on the U.S. compilation PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE, and it was also amongst the songs immortalized on the U.K. compilation THE SINGLES 81-85, which shares cover art with a different U.S. compilation, CATCHING UP WITH DEPECHE MODE, but just to cause as much confusion as possible, that compilation does not feature “Get the Balance Right!” and the PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE compilation is now out of print.

So where can you find the song?

Why, on the expanded version of the album that the song originally failed to be included on: CONSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN.