Worst Depeche Mode Lyric

He misses sometimes, but I think he has some great lines too. Particularly some really great lines about religion. And "New Dress" is genius all the way through!

you guys suck & "What's Your Name?" rules.

I want somebody to share
Share the rest of my life
Share my innermost thoughts
Know my intimate details
Someone who'll stand by my side
And give me support
And in return
She'll get my support
She will listen to me
When I want to speak
About the world we live in
And life in general
Though my views may be wrong
They may even be perverted
She'll hear me out
And won't easily be converted
To my way of thinking
In fact she'll often disagree
But at the end of it all
She will understand me

I want somebody who cares
For me passionately
With every thought and
With every breath
Someone who'll help me see things
In a different light
All the things I detest
I will almost like
I don't want to be tied
To anyone's strings
I'm carefully trying to steer clear of
Those things
But when I'm asleep
I want somebody
Who will put their arms around me
And kiss me tenderly
Though things like this
Make me sick
In a case like this
I'll get away with it

""Somebody", which was sung by Martin Gore in the studio in the nude, includes one of Gore's "little twists," where the song builds as if it's a song about finding your perfect love, only to have him reveal at the end "though things like this make me sick / in a case like this I'll get away with it.""

Can anybody actually help me out here. I have felt confused by this song since the age of ten.

Confusions: why is this a piano ballad by an electronic band, and why is this song so popular?

Why is Martin Gore asking for the bare minimum regarding human interaction? Is he suggesting-- to a wife or a lover perhaps-- in song form-- the ultimate form of manipulative musician behaviour, "I'm gonna write a song about you"-- that he is not getting these bare minimums?

And are they even "bare minimums"? It seems upon closer inspection that he's actually asking for a fucking lot. The rest of your life? with you, Martin? Know your innermost thoughts, intimate details-- are you affecting closeness by over-sharing? Support-for-support? that's nice, but stating that this basic transaction of mutuality needs to be proposed rather than occurs naturally is kind of.. chilling?

Like "I want somebody who'll buy / me a dinner sometimes / and in return / I'll buy her dinner sometimes"

And things start to get REALLY WEIRD. Even at age ten my head spun when the song goes:

To my way of thinking
In fact she'll often disagree
But at the end of it all
She will understand me

I feel like he's programming an ideal female companion and adjusting the duration of an artificial tolerance for his wrong and perverted views before she does come around and agree with him, assure him that DM is better than Yazoo, that UKIP have some good points, like

Why is such a nitwitt-y description of an ideal conversation with a partner the final stanza of this first verse

I feel like I could rewrite this verse a hundred times and improve upon it

To my way of thinking
She will not like mushy peas
But when she tastes of my peas
She will like mushy peas

To my way of thinking
She will be fond of John Cleese
And when I quote some John Cleese
She will laugh at me

And then things get, somehow, EVEN WEIRDER.

There is full on mixed messages going on in verse two with "I want somebody who cares for me passionately / with every thought / and with every breath" but then a moment later "I don't want to be tied to anyone's strings / I'm trying to stay clear of those things"

And it's at this point that I remember that part from the wiki where apparently Martin sang this song in the nude. Yes. In the nude. I do not sing in the nude. When I sing I am focusing on delivering the best performance for the material I have created. I am not thinking about my testicles crawling around in response to the cold studio air. But Martin sings in the nude. For whom? For his band mates? For the recording engineer? Certainly not for himself.

And it's my conclusion that Martin did not, in fact, sing this song in the nude, any more than Prince sang "Cream" while jerking off, because these sort of apocryphal stories are not indicative of actually how the world works

And that the "Martin sang this song in the nude" story is just as intrinsic to this band's Some Great Reward-era appeal of the hair-to-high-heaven and pouts and leather jackets-- to capitalize on their teeny-bopper hunkiness

And it becomes clearer that this stanza-- "with every thought, and with every breath" and then "I don't want to be tied to anyone's strings"-- is in fact just an extension of all this manipulation. Martin wants devoted followers, but also freedom to escape at any time

This is a song designed to fuck with your mind

It is fucking with my mind

Someone who'll help me see things
In a different light
All the things I detest
I will almost like

"Detest" was not chosen for its rhyming scheme, it was chosen because it is the word choice of a boy from an expensive school, it reenforces class distinctions, it asserts his class-based primacy, the word detestable is just so gross, fuck this

Though things like this
Make me sick
In a case like this
I'll get away with it

What the fuck, is this all a dream, then? You were lying the whole time? Is this piano ballad a lie? Is this band entirely a lie? What the fuck is going on

I always thought the "things like this" refer to sappy love songs. No explanation for anything else, but more baffling to me than this song is that they rewrote it with a very similar title on their next album

I honestly can't wait for DJP's response here.

I feel like he's programming an ideal female companion and adjusting the duration of an artificial tolerance for his wrong and perverted views before she does come around and agree with him, assure him that DM is better than Yazoo, that UKIP have some good points, like

Does “understand me” = “come around and agree”? As opposed to just, literally, “understand where I’m coming from” (even if she doesn’t agree)?

“make me sick” is britishism for worrying/anxiety right?

like martin has written a heartfelt ballad about how he wants to find someone who will stick with him and remind him he’s wrong sometimes and he’s really anxious that he’s been unable to find the right words

“make me sick” is britishism for worrying/anxiety right?

Not really. I'd never heard this song before this thread, it's terrible.

I took the "though things like this make me sick" line as Martin saying he's not comfortable being so open about such things, which makes sense.

Great song.

But he's comfortable singing them in the nude, funny that.

Well, by all accounts the room that he was singing in was well out of the way of the control room, so it's not like people were staring at him while he was tracking the vocal. Secondly, Gore was known for taking his clothes off once he'd had a few (the beginning of the video to 'A Question of Lust' almost capturing once such moment) - it (the alcohol) would develop into a real problem for him.

gore did not go to an "expensive school".

It's just one of those words, I guess. "Detest".

A friend of mine was breaking up with his girlfriend, and after a particularly bad fight, he texted her, "hey, I am really sorry things have gotten so hard between us. I just wanted to text you and tell you that I love you, I care for you, and I hope at some point we will be friends again."

She texted him back, "hey, I am not sorry that things have gotten so hard between us. I want you to know that I hate you, by which I mean: I despise you, I abhor you, I vilify you, I absolutely will DETEST you for the rest of your miserable life, and I look forward to pissing on your grave."

He texted her back, "I'm glad that thesaurus is working out for you."

Detestation has a kind of particular connotation to it, in my lexicon anyway. It suggests a kind of "I am above this thing" airiness. Things that are detestable include: when the country club is closed, poorly paired wine with a meal, the poor, etc.

Ha yeah, he went to a comprehensive in Basildon - the same one as Alison Moyet, iirc.

(xx-post)

And the caveat "I will almost like" takes that airiness even further-- "I will not ever like this thing that I feel is beneath me, but I will accept some level of tolerance for it, for the sake of my beloved Ideal Woman, I will deign to consider a level of tolerance for something I find detestable-- but I will NEVER claim to actually like it"

That would be going too far, you see

my strongest memory of this song is a woman singing along to the whole thing at a DM show with tears in her eyes

I always thought this was meant to be creepy? I first heard it on the cassette version of the Singles 81-85 album where it's immediately followed by Shake The Disease which repeats the 'understand me' lyric but in a context where it's more obviously a threat/demand, and a reiteration of the 'I don't want to be tied to anyone's strings' sentiment - I'd actually thought until just now that the two songs were released as a double A side, but I was mistaken and it's Blasphemous Rumours/Somebody that was the double A-side. Shake The Disease is surely an intentional companion song to Somebody though?

'detest' feel like a real Morrissey word, though I can't off the top of my head think of any examples of him using it in his lyrics

Yeah, a Morrissey word is right

When I first heard this song-- via sheet music!-- it was my first exposure to DM. I guess, now, thinking about other Martin songs, that a "this is meant to be creepy" explanation makes more sense, he's always walked that line?

But like:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81niaViDThL.jpg

You might understand why I felt confused about the man's intentions? And I do feel that a great-many listeners would take these manipulative lyrics at face-value and just think that this is "normal male sensitivity and romanticism"?

I first heard it from the Veruca Salt cover, and assumed it was meant to be creepy

normal goth teen sensitivity and romanticism maybe