Deftones / Covers / 2005
No Ordinary Love
yearning, heavy, slow-building desperation beneath surface romanticism
This is Deftones' cover of the Sade track, rebuilt as a slow-burning, distorted meditation on devotion that curdles into desperation. The band keeps the original's declarative lyric almost intact but reframes it through sludgy guitars and Chino Moreno's strained vocal, so the song's insistence on exceptional love starts to sound like pleading rather than celebration.
devotion and exhaustion unreciprocated love self-sacrifice doubt beneath declaration repetition as emotional erosion
Who's speaking
A first-person narrator addresses a lover directly, insisting on the uniqueness of their bond while the repeated protestations suggest the narrator may be trying to convince themselves as much as the listener or partner. The voice reads as emotionally reliable but increasingly fragile.
What happens
The song opens with the narrator cataloguing everything given to the relationship, then questions whether that devotion was acknowledged or returned. The chorus asserts the relationship's exceptional status, a brief verse recalls the early brightness of the romance, and the song closes by dissolving the earlier phrase about persistence into a new, more anguished phrase about weeping, suggesting the effort has shifted from hopeful to despairing.
How it's built
Verse-chorus structure borrowed from the original soul arrangement, but Deftones slow the tempo and thicken the instrumentation so each repetition of the chorus feels heavier rather than catchier. The ending drops the verses entirely and loops a mutated version of the earlier refrain, turning a lyrical throwaway into the emotional crux.
Section by section
Opening verse
“I gave you all the love I got”
The narrator opens with an inventory of emotional sacrifice, establishing a one-sided ledger of giving that sets up the song's central tension between devotion and reciprocity.
Pre-chorus questioning
“Didn't I tell you what I believe”
The shift into direct questioning introduces doubt and a trace of resentment, as the narrator seems to anticipate or recall outside skepticism about the relationship's durability.
Chorus
The assertion that this love is not ordinary functions as both boast and reassurance; in Deftones' heavier, slower rendering it sounds less triumphant than original, more like a mantra repeated to stave off collapse.
Brightened-day verse
A brief, tender recollection of the relationship's early joy interrupts the heavier emotional register, offering the only moment of uncomplicated warmth before the song returns to its anxious repetitions.
Outro
“keep crying for you, keep trying for you”
The final section collapses the song's two competing impulses, effort and grief, into a single looping phrase, suggesting that persistence and sorrow have become indistinguishable by the song's end.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated opening of lines with a claim of giving love builds a litany-like insistence, mimicking the narrator's attempt to prove devotion through sheer repetition.
- rhetorical question
- Direct questions to the addressee about belief and effort create an accusatory undertone, implying the narrator feels their devotion has gone unanswered.
- refrain mutation
- The phrase about persistence gradually morphs into a phrase about weeping in the outro, using near-identical phonetic shape to mark a shift from determination to grief without needing new language.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats this as a song about love sustained past the point of certainty, where repeated declarations of exceptionalism function as self-persuasion rather than confident celebration, especially given how Deftones' arrangement drains the original's silky confidence and replaces it with strain and weight. An alternative reading, closer to the original Sade recording's intent, hears it as a more straightforward anthem of secure, passionate love, with the questioning lines simply dismissing outside doubters rather than registering real uncertainty. Deftones' sonic choices tip the balance toward the former.
Context
This track appears on Deftones' Covers EP, a collection of cover songs recorded in the mid-2000s spanning a stylistically wide range of source material. The original is a 1980s soul/pop ballad by Sade known for its smooth, confident delivery; Deftones' version transforms it through their signature heavy, atmospheric alternative metal sound, slowing the tempo and adding distortion and vocal strain, which recontextualizes the lyric's confident declarations as something more anxious and vulnerable. I have moderate familiarity with this cover but limited certainty about specific production details or band commentary on its recording.
Listen for
- The contrast between the lyric's confident declarations and the strained, heavier vocal delivery
- How the tempo and guitar weight slow down what was originally a smoother, more buoyant arrangement
- The way the ending loop blurs two nearly identical phrases into one, shifting the song's emotional meaning
- Dynamic builds within the chorus repetitions that mirror rising desperation rather than celebration
About Deftones
Deftones is an American alternative metal band formed in Sacramento, California, in 1988. They were formed by frontman Chino Moreno, lead guitarist Stephen Carpenter and drummer Abe Cunningham, with bassist Chi Cheng and keyboardist and turntablist Frank Delgado joining the lineup in 1990 and 1999, respectively.
1988 - present / United States
Full biography and catalogue