Sweetest Perfection

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1. World In My Eyes
2. Sweetest Perfection
List of Violator songs
3. Personal Jesus
Sweetest Perfection
Album-Violator.jpg
Song Sweetest Perfection
By Depeche Mode
Songwriter Martin L. Gore
Produced by Depeche Mode
Flood
Recorded at Puk Studios, Denmark
Logic Studios, Milan
Length (mm:ss) 4:43
Tempo 101 BPM
Time signature 3
4
Key B Major
Engineering assistance Daryl Bamonte
Dick Meaney
David Browne
Mark Flannery
Mixed by François Kevorkian
Recorded May 1989 – January 1990
Originally released 19 March 1990
Live performances as Depeche Mode 21 times *
Total live performances 29 times *

"Sweetest Perfection" is a song from the 1990 album Violator by Depeche Mode.

Notes

Alan Wilder describes how the outro came to be in a Q&A on Shunt, the official Recoil website: "The weird stuff at the end came together during the mixing stage (with François Kevorkian). It's the kind of thing you resort to when you haven't really got an ending ;-)"[1]

In 2006, all of Depeche Mode's studio albums were being remastered. Engineer Kevin Paul told Sound On Sound magazine: "'Sweetest Perfection' was completely crazy. It has lots of tape loops, lots of phasing, all sorts of crazy sounds going on. That was really hard to emulate and I had to put my personal spin on it just to get it to work."

Lyrics


Sweetest Perfection

The sweetest perfection

To call my own

The slightest correction

Couldn't finely hone

The sweetest infection

Of body and mind

Sweetest injection

Of any kind


I stop and I stare too much

Afraid that I care too much

And I hardly dare to touch

For fear that the spell may be broken

When I need a drug in me

And it brings out the thug in me

Feel something tugging me

Then I want the real thing not tokens


Things you'd expect to be

Having effect on me

Pass undetectedly

But everyone knows what has got me

Takes me completely

Touches me sweetly

Reaches so deeply

I know that nothing can stop me


Sweetest perfection

An offer was made

An assorted collection

But I wouldn't trade


The sweetest perfection

To call my own

The slightest correction

Couldn't finely hone (Nothing can stop me)

The sweetest infection (Takes me completely)

Of body and mind (Touches so sweetly)

Sweetest injection (Reaches so deeply)

Of any kind


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

Composition

Sample sources

"Sweetest Perfection"
Depeche Mode
1990
Self-made samples
Sample Notes Audio
Drum elements, tom drum A manipulated drum sample originally recorded for use with 1983's "Pipeline" is utilised sporadically throughout "Sweetest Perfection".

Sample sources
Sample Source Status Notes Audio
Guitar elements Fleetwood Mac - "Black Magic Woman" - 29 March 1968
Confirmed
This sample is looped and manipulated to produce a ghostly pad with oscillating pitch and creative panning effects during the verses.

Live performances

Main article: Available recordings of "Sweetest Perfection"
Main article: List of dates where "Sweetest Perfection" was played

Trivia

  • 'Sweetest Perfection' has been covered by Fourplay String Quartet (1998).

References