If You Want
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8. If You Want List of Some Great Reward songs |
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If You Want
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| Song | If You Want |
|---|---|
| By | Depeche Mode |
| Songwriter | Alan Wilder |
| Produced by | Depeche Mode Daniel Miller Gareth Jones |
| Recorded at | Music Works (Highbury, London) Hansa Mischraum (Berlin) |
| Length (mm:ss) | 4:40 |
| Tempo | 137 BPM |
| Time signature | 4 4 |
| Key | E♭ Major |
| Engineering assistance | Ben Ward Stefi Marcus Colin McMahon |
| Design | Martyn Atkins David A. Jones Marcx |
| Photography | Brian Griffin |
| Photography assistance | Stuart Graham |
| Recorded | January–August 1984 |
| Originally released | 24 September 1984 |
| Live performances as Depeche Mode | 81 times * |
| Total live performances | 81 times * |
"If You Want" is a song from the 1984 album Some Great Reward by Depeche Mode.
Notes
From the November 1984 issue of International Musician And Recording World:
Alan: "We were doing this combination with Martin doing his Indian voice combined with a bassoon type sound."
Martin: [launches into his Indian voice] "It was pretty ethnic."
Tribute band The Devout asked Alan in 2025 about this song, and he recalled:
Devout: "The explosive break after the first verse of 'If You Want' always enamoured me. [...] [I] was amazed to find a very quiet, basic sound extra synth line, playing 3rds and 5ths of the main riff (that Martin played live on a DX7). You can barely hear it but if it's taken out the riff disintegrates. How common was this kind of technique, filling out synth breaks? Can you think of any other examples?"
Alan: "Now you're asking. If it's the break I’m thinking of, the bell-like sound (+delay) is a synclavier synthesised sound (not DX7) – probably manipulated by Daniel Miller, then combined with an orchestral sample at the front for the dynamic hit element. I could be wrong, but I'd guess that sample was what we would have called the 'Carmina stab' or 'Carl stab' (sampled from 'Carmina Burana', composer Carl Orff). Going back to my earlier answer, when this digital technology came about, we were obsessed with 'combination sounds' – and the synclavier allowed you to layer synthesised and sampled sounds on top of each other – this is back in 1983/4 and was innovative at the time technologically. We did this kind of thing often to try to create huge BD drums, snares, bass parts, riffs – you name it. And once we had piled 3-4 different sounds on top of each other – all for one musical part – we may well have sampled off the entire mixture again, together with some painstakingly complicated reverb which had been sent into another studio and back, either for ease of mixing or for use later in a live context. Complicated? You bet! But that is how DM managed to sound so unique. There are endless examples of this, particularly in that Berlin period from 'Construction Time Again' through to 'Black Celebration'. I think Daniel, Gareth and I really thought we were breaking new ground at the time."
Lyrics
If You Want
Working week's come to its end
Party time is here again
Everyone can come if they want to
If you want to be with me
If you want to be with me
You can come with me if you want to
Exercise your basic right
We could build a building site
From the bricks of shame is built the hope
If you want to be with me
If you want to be with me
Even though you may still not want to
Let tomorrow and today
Bring a life of ecstacy
Wipe away your tears of confusion
If you want to be with me
If you want to be with me
You can come with me if you want to
Even though you may still not want to / Even though you still may not want to[1]
Songwriter: Alan Wilder
Publishing Information: ©1984 Grabbing Hands Music Ltd/EMI Music Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.
Demo version
If You Want is the penultimate track on the 1984 album Some Great Reward and is the second track on Alan Wilder's 1984 "Some Great Reward" demo tape, which consists of four tracks. You can stream the entire demo track below, or download the entire four-track demo tape here.
Live performances
- Main article: Available recordings of "If You Want"
- Main article: List of dates where "If You Want" was played
References
- ↑ There is a single change in lyrics between the album and the demo versions in the last line of the song. The placement of the words "still" and "may" appear in sequence in the demo version, and are reversed in the album version.
