Songfacts®:

• Keyboardist and guitarist Martin Gore wrote the majority of the lyrics for Spirit, in which he expresses his distress at the way humanity has lost its way. "Spirit relates to so much that is going on in the world," he explained to The Sun. "Although a lot of the songs were written before Brexit or Trump taking power, there was already a feeling that the world was in a mess. I couldn't write an album without addressing that. It felt wrong to turn my back on it and write about other things."
  
  He added: "The final song, Fail, talks about losing our spirit and how we've failed and includes my favorite line 'We are f---ed.'"
• Gahan explained the record's title to Rolling Stone. "We called the album Spirit, because it's like, 'Where's the spirit gone?' or 'Where's the spirit in humanity?'" he said. "We considered calling it Maelstrom – that was a bit too heavy metal."