Wonderful Life

Notes

2004: Martin Gore writes the guitar part for a Gwen Stefani song called Wonderful Life. The song was meant to appear on her first solo album but that had too many songs, and so it then appeared on her second solo album in 2006. Gwen told Herald Sun and Inpress Australia: "It was written for my first kissing-love, Matt Ellej. He actually passed away and wanted to write a song for him, and I wrote 'Wonderful Life'. He was a huge Depeche Mode fan. He actually turned me on to them. I was like, 'Depeche Mode? That's electronic weirdo music'. At the time it was. We'd never heard that shit before. I told Martin about Matt and how much he loved Depeche Mode. And Martin was awesome. It was early on in the album and I was singing him some of the demos." Martin Gore told Intro.de/Time Out Russia: "She contacted me and wanted to write a few songs with me. But I don't feel like sitting in a room and writing songs with somebody. I think that songwriting is a very personal affair. I think it can be quite awkward to write songs with someone you hardly know. Gwen made jokes about it and told me that in the past two years she had been writing songs with so many people that she had become a "songwriting whore". There was no stage of awkwardness for her anymore. She played me some songs that she had been working on. But all I could offer her in return, in order for her to not to be too upset by the refusal, was to play some guitar to one track, if she wanted to. And so I now play the guitar on one of the songs."