Covers Courageous #9: The Cure - "World in My Eyes" (1998)

With Robert Smith's birthday just coming this week, and my radio show's semi-annual covers show coming up next week, I was inspired to write about this week's cover, The Cure covering Depeche Mode.

In music, some rivalries come about inexplicably, like sports rivalries. Oilers fans hate Flames fans and vice versa. Leafs and Habs fans. White Sox and Cubs fans. You get the idea. Music rivalries seem just as intense, but a bit shorter lived, due to the nature of musical groups. So, in the late 80s, you had Metallica and Megadeth. If you liked one, you couldn't like the other. Or, beefs in hip-hop like LL Cool J vs. Kool Moe Dee, who's musical rivalry lasted over their whole careers and several songs dissing each other. The biggest one in the new wave scene was The Cure vs. Depeche Mode.

The two bands were similar, both from the UK, both part of the new wave scene and both catering to a sort of disenfranchised, bored, suburban youth at the time. The Cure were more cerebral, more dense, more arty. Depeche Mode were more poppy, more dancy and prettier to look at. If you liked the Cure, then you hated DM. If you liked Depeche, you didn't listen to the Cure. Ideally that is.

I wonder sometimes how much these rivalries carry over to the bands themselves. As comical as a rumble (or a glare fight) between fans of the two bands, I just can't see Robert Smith grumbling under his breath about that damned pretty boy Dave Gahan. It seems too ridiculous to me.

I'll admit, when I first saw the compilation, For the Masses, which came out in 1998, I was a bit shocked to see The Cure covering Depeche Mode's "World in My Eyes". I guess I still had it in the back of my mind that these bands hated each other. I was on the Depeche Mode side of that argument, I never really clicked into what The Cure were doing, and I still have trouble accessing exactly why they're considered so brilliant. I like The Cure, but I never loved them as slavishly as many of their fans.

The Cure's take on "World in Your Eyes" is an intriguing one. "World in My Eyes" is from Depeche Mode's most successful album Violator (1990), an album that merges crisp synth-pop with angular guitar. The guitar stuff works great with The Cure's esthetic. Robert Smith adds a muddy and noisy guitar and synth-mess on top of the DM groove. The crisp pop of the original is almost entirely gone, save for a synth bridge between verses. Otherwise, the poppier parts of the song are smeared with obscure lyrics, fuzzed out guitars and foggy production. It's a great melding of what made both bands great.