Art & Creativity Quote by Martin Gore

There is something almost quaint - and quietly radical - in Martin Gore admitting that record covers taught him how to listen. Before algorithms decided what you might like next, music discovery was a physical, eye-led scavenger hunt. You flipped through bins, got hooked by a font, a photograph, a weird piece of illustration, and gambled your allowance on a mood. Gore frames cover art not as packaging but as a gateway drug: the image sells you on a world, not just a tracklist.

The subtext is about trust and imagination. A great cover gives you permission to enter unfamiliar sound because it feels like a coherent identity. That matters for someone like Gore, whose work in Depeche Mode hinges on atmosphere, design, and the total aesthetic experience. Their music has always lived in a larger system of signals: the sleeve, the typography, the single edits, the videos, the aura. Saying he "discovered" music through covers is also a nod to how taste gets built socially and visually - you learn what "counts" as interesting by recognizing certain visual codes.

It also carries a quiet critique of the present. Streaming flattens the album into a thumbnail and discovery into a feed. Gore is pointing to a slower, more tactile culture where curiosity had friction - and that friction made the payoff feel earned. The line defends the idea that looking is part of listening, and that art direction can be a kind of education.