I was never cool enough to like The Cure or Depeche Mode — at least, that’s what I thought at the time. Those were groups for poetic, dark-clothes-wearing kids, the kind who were hip by dint of their very outcastness. The music, I imagined, was heavy and weird and dark. I lumped the groups together and wrote them off.

To be honest, I’m still wildly ignorant about both groups. For instance, I probably didn’t give Depeche Mode a single thought between the moment in 1990 when I was sitting next to a friend on a (yes) youth-symphony field trip who let me listen to the group on her Walkman for a couple of minutes, and the moment in 2002 when I was playing a new Johnny Cash CD and my housemate hollered out, “Is he singing Depeche Mode?!”

Even this morning, when I heard the song that inspired this train of thought, I looked it up as Depeche Mode only to realize it was by The Cure. File under Foreigner/Journey, I guess — except in this case, the pairing seems to be more common (and neatly broken down in this Cure vs Depeche Mode post, which I haven’t read in its entirety but whose very existence I appreciate).

ANYHOW. My point here, and it’s a short and sweet one despite all evidence to the contrary, is that I have grown to know and like some of each group’s music, and I especially love the song “Just Like Heaven.” I occasionally bust out with a “show me show me show me” with no context at all, and when I hear the song I deffffinitely stop the radio.

That’s it. That’s the story. It’s a song, and I like it. Happy Tuesday!

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