“People are People” by Depeche Mode

"People Are People" was the lead single from Some Great Reward, Depeche Mode's fourth album, in 1984, and it's the record where their synth-pop picked up a clanging, metallic muscle. Martin Gore wrote it, Dave Gahan sings it, and the band produced it with Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones, who also engineered, at Hansa Mischraum in West Berlin.

The beat sounds like it was hammered out of scrap metal, all clattering percussion and hard-edged synth stabs, while Gahan's voice cuts through the racket with an earnest, big-hearted chorus. It's pop, but pop with its sleeves rolled up and grease under its nails.

It became the band's biggest hit up to that point. It went to number 1 in West Germany, climbed to number 4 in the UK, their highest placing there so far, and cracked the American Top 20 for the first time, climbing as high as number 13 on the Hot 100. It followed "Love, in Itself" and was followed by "Master and Servant".

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.