My Favourite Music Video: Sam Pilling waxes lyrical about Depeche Mode's Wrong

Date
17 March 2014

We’ve been big fans of Sam Pilling for a few years now – inspired and excited by his work for the likes of SBTRKT and Two Door Cinema Club – so he was a natural contender for our My Favourite Music Video feature. And what a pearler he’s picked; Patrick Daughters’ weird and wonderful video for Depeche Mode’s Wrong complete with a masked man driving a car backwards, hit and runs aplenty and even an almost imperceptible Spike Jonze cameo. Over to Sam to tell us why this dazzles and delights him so..

Sam Pilling – Depeche Mode: Wrong

I love this music video for so many reasons. Firstly, it feels more like a scene from a feature film than a music video. It’s beautifully cinematic and tells a great narrative; dark, twisted and perfectly developed throughout. I think it’s a mark of a great director when they take something so simple and make it so powerful and engaging. The main components of the video are really just one car, one street and one character but the way the story builds is what makes it so special.

The video begins as something intriguing and surreal. The image of a car driving backwards down the street with no-one behind the wheel is bizarre and “wrong” and thus catches our attention. But then the plot thickens when we see that someone is actually in the car, they’re just lying down.

Over the course of the next three minutes the video becomes more and more sinister and captivating as we’re fed little bits of information that push the narrative forwards and keep the viewer guessing as to what has happened and what is going to happen. And the ending is perfect – just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it does…

Lastly, not forgetting that this is in fact a music video, the band make an appearance without it feeling forced or taking us out of the narrative. Oh and Spike Jonze makes a cameo appearance too, though you’d be hard pressed to work out where.

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Patrick Daughters: Depeche Mode – Wrong (still)

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Patrick Daughters: Depeche Mode – Wrong (still)

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Patrick Daughters: Depeche Mode – Wrong (still)

Above

Patrick Daughters: Depeche Mode – Wrong (still)

Above

Patrick Daughters: Depeche Mode – Wrong (still)

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About the Author

Rob Alderson

Rob joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in July 2011 before becoming Editor-in-Chief and working across all editorial projects including itsnicethat.com, Printed Pages, Here and Nicer Tuesdays. Rob left It’s Nice That in June 2015.

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