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Today's ear X-tacy: Depeche Mode "Just Can't Get Enough"

Wishing Vince Clarke a happy 63rd birthday today!

“Just Can't Get Enough" is a riff-driven synth-pop song by Depeche Mode. In the UK, it was their third preview single, released a month before their debut studio album, Speak & Spell, in 1982. It was the band's first single to be released in the US.

Depeche Mode founding member and keyboardist Vince Clarke wrote this synth-pop landmark when he was 20. Musically, he said was inspired by "To Cut a Long Story Short" by Spandau Ballet, released in 1980. To that point, Clarke wasn't into dance music, but the Spandau Ballet song turned him around.

"It was the first time I was actually impressed by a rhythm that went 'boom-thwack, boom-thwack,'" he stated. "It was the first time I discovered dance music for myself, and to write a song around the rhythm was quite a revelation for me. 'Just Can't Get Enough' came out of that."

Clarke left the band shortly after the release of the album, later joining the bands Yaz and Erasure.

This is the only video Clarke appeared in with Depeche Mode.

John is the mid-morning host on WFPK. Email John at jtimmons@lpm.org

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