World In My Eyes

1. World In My Eyes
List of Violator songs

World In My Eyes

Song	World In My Eyes
By	Depeche Mode
Songwriter	Martin L. Gore
Produced by	Depeche Mode Flood
Recorded at	Logic Studios, Milan Puk Studios, Denmark The Church, London
Length (mm:ss)	4:26 (album version) 4:00 (single edit)
Tempo	122 BPM
Time signature	⁴ ₄
Key	B♭ Minor
Engineered by	Pino Pischetola Peter Iversen Steve Lyon Goh Hotoda Alan Gregorie Dennis Mitchell Phil Legg
Engineering assistance	Daryl Bamonte Dick Meaney David Browne Mark Flannery
Mixed by	François Kevorkian
Design	Anton Corbijn Area
Recorded	1989–1990
Originally released	17 September 1990
Live performances as Depeche Mode	709 times *
Total live performances	709 times *

"World In My Eyes" is a song from the 1990 album Violator by Depeche Mode. It was released as a single on 17 September 1990.

Notes

Martin Gore says in the 17 February 1990 issue of NME:

Interviewer: On the opening track 'World In My Eyes' you seem to be saying 'Just for this moment pleasure and gratification are all that matters'. It's almost like (deep breath) existentialism.

Gore: Yes, and it's a very positive song. It's saying that love and sex and pleasure are positive things.

Dave Gahan told Gear Magazine in 1998:

"It's about being comfortable with somebody. When you're in a moment with someone and you realize you haven't said a word for the past couple of hours."

Gore described the evolution of the studio recording of 'World In My Eyes' in BONG magazine issue no. 37, 1998:

I remember the original demo of 'World In My Eyes' being slightly faster and maybe slightly more obvious. While we were recording it in Milan, Dave was going away for a couple of days, so we worked on it and turned it into this really moody piece. I can remember Dave arriving back in the studio, slightly jet-lagged and being totally shocked, thinking that we just ruined the song, but half a day later he came back and said 'That's really good, the way it's turned out.' It always takes a while to get used to things.

Alan Wilder explains in an editorial on Shunt, the official Recoil website:

'World In My Eyes' had in fact been recorded very early on during the Milan session and, perhaps for this reason, displayed familiar Depeche elements linking it with previous albums. It was completed in London and with its 'drop' 3rd verse and use of vocal double-tracking to fill out and build the later choruses, was probably the most 'electro' sounding track on the LP — something of a homage to Kraftwerk, in a rhythmical sense at least. Laughing in the face of criticism that electronic music was 'soulless' and would only appeal to a small eclectic audience, its success exhibited one of Depeche Mode's most fundamental philosophies.^[1]

2006 remaster engineer Kevin Paul explained in a November 2007 interview for Sound On Sound magazine:

I had about 20 or 30 different tapes for 'World In My Eyes' and I had to get them all to sync up and try to find the missing sounds. There is a snare-drum drop which is reversed — completely flipped. It wasn't on any of the tapes and it turned out it was most likely to have been done on an Akai with an Atari, run wild, so that was something Roger [Johnson] had to do. He had to find the sample and flip it and get the sound back. Everything then was backed up on floppy disks which now no-one can ever work. It is nigh-on an impossibility to get them to work as they did back then.^[2]

Andrew Fletcher explains in a 2017 interview for Hotmix Radio:

"For me, ['World In My Eyes'] really shows how we've managed to have all these people from different countries all over the world together, liking Depeche Mode."^[3]

Lyrics

World In My Eyes

Let me take you on a trip

Around the world and back

And you won't have to move

You just sit still

Now let your mind do the walking

And let my body do the talking

Let me show you the world in my eyes

I'll take you to the highest mountain

To the depths of the deepest sea

And we won't need a map

Believe me

Now let my body do the moving

And let my hands do the soothing

Let me show you the world in my eyes

That's all there is

Nothing more than you can feel now

That's all there is

Let me put you on a ship

On a long, long trip

Your lips close to my lips

All the islands in the ocean

All the heaven's in motion

Let me show you the world in my eyes

That's all there is

Nothing more than you can touch now

That's all there is

Let me show you the world in my eyes

Songwriter: Martin L. Gore
Publishing Information: ©1990 Grabbing Hands Music Ltd/EMI Music Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.

Composition

Sample sources

"World In My Eyes"
Depeche Mode
1990

Self-made samples

Sample

Notes

Audio

Synthesizer elements

The origin of the bass is a combination of a series of unique synthesized parts. According to Wilder, the bass parts are likely to have originated from the Minimoog and Flood's ARP 2600.^[4]

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Vocal elements

A series of solo vocal "ahh" samples likely derived from vocals by Martin Gore play an oscillating melody during the outro of "World In My Eyes".^{[footnotes 1]}

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Sample sources

Sample

Source

Status

Notes

Audio

Drum, snare drum elements

Fad Gadget - Fireside Favourites - "Newsreel" - 7 November 1980

Confirmed

A manipulated snare derived from the opening moments of "Newsreel" from the 1980 Fad Gadget album Fireside Favourites is utilised throughout "World In My Eyes". Notably, this sample would also see use in the outro of "Personal Jesus". Former Depeche Mode member Alan Wilder recalled the snare drum sound of "World In My Eyes" in an undated Q&A on Shunt, the official Recoil project site: "[...] I think we made it from scratch or it could be a combination of analogue and a sample."^[4]