Title: “Enjoy the silence”
Format: Single
Written by: Martin Gore
Performed by: Depeche Mode
Genre: Electronic/Pop
Taken from: Violator
Year: 1990
Acclaim: Top ten in most territories, including US and UK
Just shows you: I could have sworn this was a single from the eighties, but the internet, she don' lie, and apparently I've been corrected. Depeche Mode were another of those, to be unkind, puff bands I hated when I was young. Peer pressure, sure: everyone was into rock and nobody wanted to be listening to, or accused of listening to, pansy synth pop bands, but that's not the point: I wasn't pressured into ignoring a band I liked. I never liked Depeche Mode, same as I never liked Duran Duran or Human League or basically any band that could not be called a rock band, using my own narrow definition. I could not say whether I still hate them, and given that my experience of them was and is limited to their hit singles, maybe they're worth getting more into. I did find something lurking within Gary Numan's music – music I had always despised and reviled – when I reviewed a trio of his albums back in 2013. But I'm unlikely to do this with Depeche Mode. I'm just not that interested.
I always found them to be very dour, even on uptempo songs like “Just can't get enough”. Something about Dave Gahan's voice always seemed to me to be devoid of emotion, rather like (I thought, and still do, to a lesser extent) Mr. Numan. But this song is at its heart a love song, with the singer glorying in the fact that he is alone with his lover and no words are needed; they can enjoy the silence. But it contains what I used to think of as, and still do mostly, the cold, soulless, blank synth line that seemed to cut through every song of this type of band. It has to do with the way the synth players played, too: I seldom saw one who seemed to be enjoying himself. They seemed to push the keys, looking ahead with what looked like dead eyes, emotionless, as if they were bored, or above their audience. I'm sure it was all part of the image, but it annoyed me. I want to see my musicians
enjoy themselves, y'know?
Anyway, there's no getting away from the fact that it's a good song, very powerful if still what I consider lacking in emotion considering it's a love song, and it was covered by Lacuna Coil at one point, so that can't be bad. Not my type of music, certainly, but this one is a stayer.
Things I like about this :
1. The basic melody
2. The lyric
3. The keyboard run later in the song
4. Outro
Things I don't like about this:
1. Goddamn puff bands!
2. Devoid of emotion, to me
3. The pointless
acapella bit at the very end after the fade.
Rating: 