Or you could sing instead…
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[4.64]
Hazel Robinson: Much as I love Depeche Mode (and this song) it is frightening that since its creation, no one has been able to cover it because it is impossible to take it as seriously as Dave Gahan. The Boyle production machine has a good stab at it here and it’s got enough melodrama to place it firmly in the top third of “Enjoy The Silence” covers available and any more-than-competent version of it is going to be worth a good six points or more but I don’t get the impression that anyone in the studio was faithfully mainlining narcotics.
[7]
Brad Shoup: Depeche Mode isn’t an institution I particularly consider worthy of defending, so I’m objecting to the ponderous Tedderization on principle. Boyle sounds great – youthful, amazingly – and heavily invested in the material. But she’s on a sinking ship of plodding piano & gospel choir, and her doom isn’t even funny.
[3]
Mark Sinker: The original? Tinny precision Gothpop from the era when no one could actually sing (in a good way, as I’ve no doubt I believed at the time): SuBo — who’s a high-end technician if nothing else — imports a bunch of bad mushmouth habits and portamento cheats into her voice, as a naughty-choirgirl version of expressive capability, while the arrangement strives to fashion a swaying reverbed arena-terrace singalong from the structure. I applaud the direction she’s apparently gradually heading — Boyle sings David Tibet!! — but no one involved has much grasp of the communicative dynamics of an entire family of subcultures travelling by touch out beyond the edge of established skill (of what time has stolen from us, in other words). A diappointing mufflement.
[4]
Anthony Easton: The profound isolation of the Depeche Mode classic, stripped of the ironic synth coldness, and made into what should be a middle aged lullaby. Just as in the separation from the world that makes a “Perfect Day” work so well with Reed, this works better than it has any right to. Someone is choosing her material very well, but she is constructing epic layers of relevance around it.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: There is absolutely nothing odd about Susan Boyle covering Depeche Mode; slightly gothy, ballad-able bands have been part of the classical/theater crossover repertoire ever since that repertoire was made, and “Enjoy the Silence” in particular has been covered by the masses. Boyle’s take is better than you’d think, both for the buzzing guitars toward the end and that she’s reined in her voice to emulate, of all people, Sarah McLachlan. Maybe next she can join Delerium.
[6]
Iain Mew: Back in my early days of writing about music, one of the very first promo CDs I ever got sent was an album by a band called Lorien. They made adequate, if derivative indie music of a blustery and sensitive type. The only thing was that while they had some otherwise ok songs they were totally torpedoed by the fact that their (Italian? Icelandic?) singer sounded like a small child. His ridiculously mannered and unsuitable voice made you doubt that he even understood what he was singing and rendered all of their songs instantly laughable. I don’t think I’d given a single thought to Lorien in the intervening nine years, but this peculiar take on “Enjoy The Silence” makes me think of nothing else.
[2]
Edward Okulicz: I like “Enjoy The Silence” enough to even like the dubious rawk version by Failure. And if Susan Boyle had emulated the Lacuna Coil version I might have dug it a lot more than I do too because the idea of Susan Boyle actually going goth rock is an orgasmic one. It’s just sad to hear it sung as the safe arrangement: half hymn, half redemptive musical number. Boyle’s take is pleasant and strangely reverent, but it could have been transformative – of song and singer – if it had been a little braver.
[6]
Alfred Soto: Try to imagine the original without the stentorian flatness of Dave Gahan’s vocal; it’s like Martin Gore ordered him to sound like a synth bass. What “Enjoy The Silence” doesn’t need is dignity. Only a certified fool like Brandon Flowers could sell Gore’s histrionic kitsch. Susan Boyle isn’t a fool, and thus the arrangement shows not the slightest clue about the song’s big dumb emotions. It’s like Tony Bennett covering “Mr. Brightside”
[3]
Jonathan Bogart: This is my first listen to La Boyle, and I’m a bit surprised by how, well, girlish her voice is. The sinister undertow of Depeche Mode’s original is bleached out, but of course we all knew that was going to happen. What’s odd is that a new sinister overtone takes it place: the music moves at an elegiac pace, while she sings like a schoolgirl — or rather, like a schoolboy whose voice has not yet broken. If this isn’t the soundtrack to gathering doom, I haven’t seen enough pretentious horror movies.
[4]
Sally O’Rourke: Who asked for this? Depeche Mode fans who hate synths and wish Dave Gahan were a lite-classical mezzo-soprano? Susan Boyle fans who want her to do a song that sounds like a Travis cover but isn’t? A producer a little too inspired by American Recordings, forgetting Cash had credibility and Rubin worked minimalist? Or is this simply another grab at the brass ring of internet LOLdom, à la last year’s version of “Perfect Day” minus the surprise factor?
[2]
Kat Stevens: Very disappointed that SuBo did “Unchained Melody” instead of this on the Strictly results show last weekend. She’s much slurrier and breathy (and thus more interesting!) here, as if she’s singing her own epitaph while purposefully wading deeper and deeper into the Swamp of Sadness. I didn’t think she had it in her! Also I would have loved to have seen what the choreographers could come up with as an interpretive dance accompaniment.
[6]