Childhood nightmares and lost in love: Five songs by The Cure that will be remembered in 100 years
When it comes to rock bands that you know will be remembered 100 years from now, The Cure are most certainly up there.
In a society that hinges so heavily on nostalgia, The Cure could have lost their relevance years ago. Before Songs of a Lost World, before even 4:13 Dream, they could have been resigned to that one band that once put out a good couple of records, with albums like Disintegration and Pornography the only ones truly worth listening to.
While those records are most certainly home to some of their better material, the beauty of the mind that is Robert Smith is that his genius stretches far beyond his magnum opus, and there are special, overlooked gems to be found everywhere. Mainly, this is because his mind seems like the gift that keeps on giving, a suspicion confirmed with the latest material, Songs of a Lost World.
Many of them continued what Smith is already known for: sweeping, extensive soundscapes about the beauty of life and death, or what Lol Tolhurst once described as the definition of Goth: the feeling of falling in love with “the melancholy beauty of existence”.
In 100 years, people will still be endeared to the same abyss of light and dark; they’ll still want music that speaks to all cadences of life and love. They’ll still return to The Cure, if only to feel a little more understood.
Five Cure songs that will be remembered in 100 years:
‘Pictures of You’
The final single from The Cure’s masterpiece, Disintegration, ‘Pictures of You’ was inspired by a picture Smith recovered after a fire ripped through his home. One of the pictures he found ended up being the single sleeve, while the song itself tackles someone who feels lucky in love – even if the person he fell in love with is no longer the same person.
As Smith later reflected, the song is about the idea of holding onto someone. “It goes back a bit to a song like ‘How Beautiful You Are’,” he said. “The idea that you hold someone [who] isn’t really what that person is like. Sometimes you completely lose touch with what a person has turned into. You just want to hold onto what they were.”
‘A Forest’
A song that should be included as part of far more lists of The Cure’s best songs, ‘A Forest’ captures everything that was ever worth listening to about the band, tackling a different kind of loss where it’s more about the inability to get a good grip on yourself than anything tangible.
Sonically, the song itself succeeds in taking you somewhere entirely visceral, likely a result of Smith channelling a childhood dream that “came true with adolescence”, which centred around the “extreme fear” he was feeling at the time and how this type of “unpleasant feeling” could be felt by anyone. This comes across in the song – that sense of aimless wandering and inability to reach a final destination. It’s utterly enchanting.
‘Close to Me’
Funnily enough, when Smith first started working on ‘Close to Me’, he didn’t even think it would be a standout track on The Head on the Door. In fact, he was a little blase about it until he started making it a little more “claustrophobic” in atmosphere, which is when it properly started coming together.
While making the record, Smith tapped into all the familiar The Cure-esque pillars – disillusionment, confusion, and nightmarish dreams. ‘Close to Me’ was no exception. As he recalled to Q, “I used to get these horrible, nightmarish visions of this head that used to hover in the chink of light that would come when the bedroom lights were turned off and the door was just ajar. The shaft of light that came from the hallway used to illuminate this patch of wallpaper and it would come to life and prophesy doom to me through the night whenever I put my eyes in that general direction.”
He continued, “It came back to me when I was writing The Head On the Door album. I was running myself into the ground a little bit and I started to suffer. I suddenly also started to get the same hallucinations, which was very odd.”
‘Just Like Heaven’
When Smith first wrote ‘Just Like Heaven’, he apparently turned to the rest of his bandmates and said, “I’ll never write something this good ever again.” Written from a place of complete and utter love and adoration for his wife, Mary Poole, the entire song plays out like a scene from a film, letting you in on a little slice of Smith’s heart.
Smith once said that it’s his favourite all-time Cure song, and it’s easy to see why – not only does it come from a jollier place than most of his other material, it’s also a snapshot in time, not only with regard to his personal life but professionally, too. After all, aside from being a heartfelt ode to his other half, it’s also a living, breathing reminder of Smith at his musical best, there to return to whenever the mood strikes.
‘Lullaby’
In keeping with the childhood nightmare throughline, ‘Lullaby’ is about as quintessential a Cure song as it gets, inspired by a nightmare Smith had as a child when he’d be eaten by a giant spider-like monster, making him feel scared to go to sleep. Listening to the song, you’re immediately sent on a journey, one filled with suspense and a sense of foreboding, but one you can’t get enough of nonetheless.
The video, inspired by David Lynch’s Eraserhead, enhances this atmosphere, while also enriching the beauty of Smith’s provocative lyricism: “And I feel like I’m being eaten / By a thousand million shivering furry holes / And I know that in the morning / I will wake up in the shivering cold / And the Spiderman is always hungry.”
