World in My Eyes
Depeche Mode
How to study this song
The card for “World in My Eyes” is built from 41 study entries at A2-: 16 English words, 5 adjectives and 20 verb forms. The glossary is the place to begin — trip, world and mind are the song’s keywords. This one leans on its verbs: 20 distinct forms against 5 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| EN | ES | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| trip | viaje | viaggio | voyage | viagem | reis | Reise |
| world | mundo | mondo | monde | mundo | wereld | Welt |
| mind | mente | mente | esprit | mente | geest | Verstand |
| body | cuerpo | corpo | corps | corpo |
What this song teaches you
Level · A2-
- Vocabulary words
- 16
- Adjectives
- 5
- Word combos
- 6
- Expressions
- 10
- Verb forms
- 20
- Quiz questions
- 35
More English songs at this level
Background
About the song
«World in My Eyes» is the song that opens «Violator», the seventh Depeche Mode studio album, released in March 1990. Before a single word is sung, the record announces itself with this track: a tight electronic pulse, a warm bass line and Dave Gahan’s low, close-to-the-microphone voice. It was the fourth and final single taken from the album, following «Personal Jesus», «Enjoy the Silence» and «Policy of Truth», and it arrived in September 1990, while the band was in the middle of the World Violation Tour.
Martin Gore wrote it, and he has described it as one of his most positive songs — a celebration of love, desire and pleasure as good things rather than something to feel guilty about. The lyric works as an invitation. The singer offers the listener a journey that needs no luggage and no map, because every destination on it is a sensation: a view, a touch, the feeling of being carried. The whole song is built on one grammatical pattern repeated in different forms, a request to be allowed to show, take and guide, and that repetition gives it a hypnotic quality that suits the music.
The recording came out of sessions held in 1989 at Logic Studios in Milan and Puk Studios in Gjerlev, Denmark, with the producer Flood, and was finished in London. According to Flood, the first version did not work, and the band agreed. Alan Wilder and Flood then spent around half a day improvising on it, and that jam changed the bass line and the melody so thoroughly that the track became something new. Gahan was at first worried that the changes had spoiled the song, before coming round to the new direction. The finished version is the one that sets the tone for the rest of «Violator», an album that went on to become the best-selling record of the band’s career and a landmark of electronic pop.
Did you know?
The song is a compact lesson in the English verb «let»: it is followed by an object and then a verb without «to». Learners whose languages use a subjunctive or an infinitive with a preposition in this position often add a «to» that English does not allow.
The two B-sides of the single, «Happiest Girl» and «Sea of Sin», were also written by Gore. The remixes that accompanied the release were made by François Kevorkian, Jon Marsh of The Beloved and Kris Weston of The Orb, which shows how closely the band was then connected to the British dance scene.