Songfacts®:

• "Speak To Me" closes Depeche Mode's 15th studio album, Memento Mori. Guitarist and keyboardist Martin Gore wrote most of the songs, but this is one of three tracks vocalist Dave Gahan contributed to the record.
  
  The song is an exploration of isolation and the search for meaning. "It's sort of metaphors," Gahan told Apple Music. "The loneliness, the emptiness, the void, the wanting to be with people and life - and at the same time, not wanting to be."
• Gahan has struggled with addiction for much of his adult life and has been in and out of rehab many times. His issues spiraled out of control in the early 1990s, and in 1996 he survived a heroin-induced cardiac arrest when his heart stopped for two minutes before paramedics revived him. This song's lyrics find Gahan in a lonely place, reaching out in desperation. Mojo magazine asked him if it's an addiction song.
  
  "That's definitely in there. Because it's built into me now," Gahan replied. "The power of that feeling of disappearing with a drug. And the power of asking for help. But also, there's a part in there where I was, in part, talking to Martin. I want to have something between us that we haven't had up to this point. I don't know what that is. And it's kind of a bit terrifying. Because what if it doesn't work?"
• Gahan hit a wall throughout the Covid pandemic and for some time after. "Speak To Me" was the key that opened the door for Gahan to make another record with Gore. "I didn't know what the songs were for; I didn't know why I was writing," he told Mojo.
  
  Then "Speak To Me" arrived, seeming to encapsulate the whole struggle and its meaning. "I could hear this melody. I could hear some words, but I didn't have my phone with me, so I had to rush home to get it down," he recalled. "It's like that thing Keith Richards says - the song's floating around and if you don't nail it down it will fly off to Neil Young or someone. And getting Speak To Me down was part of my decision - I've got to do this (the album)."
• Gore co-wrote "Speak To Me" with Depeche Mode touring drummer Christian Eigner and Memento Mori producers James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Gorillaz) and Marta Salogni (Björk).
  
  "The initial idea came to me, but the song was incredibly elevated by Martin and our producers, James and Marta, into a different place, another world," Gahan told Apple Music. "And that's exactly where I wanted the song to go as well. But it's beyond what I could have put together myself. It's a very simple song, but honest and real."
• Depeche Mode kicked off their Memento Mori World Tour on March 23, 2023, with a 23-track set at the Golden 1 Center arena in Sacramento, California. They played "'Speak To Me" live for the first time during the concert.