Murky Depeche Mode Classics Covered By Chirpy Children

It is really, really rare that I laugh till I get tears in the corners of my eyes, but these videos have done it.

I'm a longtime fan of the unrelenting gloominess and early synth work of Depeche Mode. In the 80s I'd never heard sounds and beats like that before, and it opened up a whole world of electronic music to me. The band did a lot to introduce and popularize entirely synthesized music (to more than just me, of course). Their radio and music video hit "Everything Counts" made a huge impact on ears that had never heard such an extraordinary collection of noises, which makes it even more hysterical when children do a pretty authentic cover of it with stuff from around the toy room.

Clearly this family knows how to make good use of Quality Time. My God, they even do "Strangelove"...

I know I'm courting controversy here, but I haven't been nearly as enthusiastic about DM since they moved away from their signature synth sound to a more rock band oriented thing in the 90s. I know plenty of people who (and I'll never understand this) got into the band precisely for that epic rock sound and not the crucial synth stuff that came before. I like to joke that DM has been around long enough to have fans of just their much crappier career phase.

I'm being dramatic, of course. There's plenty to like of their recent work (they have a recent live DVD that's pretty amazing), but those early unrelentingly electronic albums will always be very special in my heart. Those are very hardy songs that can even survive being covered by the mewling of adorable little moppets. Maybe we're down to projects like these to keep those early days of musical Depeche melancholia alive.

links:

One more DM cover from the Schrader family... this time it's "Shake The Disease"
The live Depeche Mode DVD I mentioned is on Amazon