Depeche Mode - Master and Servant

What this video is

Released on 20 August 1984 as the second single from Depeche Mode's fourth studio album 'Some Great Reward', 'Master and Servant' arrived at a pivotal moment in the band's artistic identity shift away from their earlier teen-pop image. Recorded primarily at Hansa Studios in West Berlin — a location steeped in post-war tension and a hub of cold-war era art and music — the song's industrial sonics and sexually…

Why it matters

A landmark in the synth-pop canon, 'Master and Servant' pushed the genre's lyrical and visual boundaries into explicitly adult, politically-charged territory. Its video's conceptual montage approach — connecting sexual power play to labour and governance — prefigures the more sophisticated…

The director

Clive Richardson is a British music video director active primarily in the 1980s. He served as the principal video director for Depeche Mode across their early catalogue, helming promos for 'Just Can't Get Enough' (1981), 'Everything Counts' (1983), 'People…