Listen to The Cure cover John Lennon song ‘Love’
Every song that has come out of The Cure has ached with emotion. Throughout his entire career, Robert Smith always had the innate ability to channel every bit of feeling in his heart onto the tape, either talking about horrors that creep into his room at night on ‘Lullaby’ or the pure euphoria he gets from seeing his love every day on ‘Just Like Heaven’. So when the time came for the band to cover a John Lennon song, it made sense for him to take a shot at one of Lennon’s most emotional tracks.
When compiling relief for the people of Darfur, artists came together to use Lennon’s music for a good cause. Although U2 may have done a great job on ‘Instant Karma’ and Green Day made a breathtaking version of ‘Working Class Hero’, The Cure inhabits ‘Love’ much more intimately than any other artist on the record.
Being a part of Lennon’s emotional solo effort Plastic Ono Band, the song initially sounds like it’s floating in the air from the moment it starts, as Lennon plucks away at his guitar about finally finding happiness. Since the rest of the album deals with the problems he suffered from as a child, this is the moment it feels like Lennon has found peace.
Then again, The Cure was never exactly known for recording peaceful music. As far back as Pornography, Smith’s music was bred out of post-punk, and songs were meant to make the listener feel either uneasy or crippled with emotion. Since the whole point behind the song initially was about coming down from an emotional high, Smith steps into Lennon’s shoes effortlessly.
While the song doesn’t have many lyrics to draw from for its main melody, it gives more room for the instrumentation to stretch out, as the rest of the band creates a wall of noise around Smith’s vocal line. The result provides the song with a unique world of its own, where Smith is reeling about what love means to him, whether through the feeling of touch or the desire to be adored by someone as much as he adores them.
Lennon wasn’t that far off from what The Cure was going for on his original version, either. From the disembodied screams of the rest of the Plastic Ono Band, Lennon was predicting the sounds of the alternative movement that The Cure would help embody, albeit with a bit more eye shadow than was commonly used at the time.
While the Lennon original consistently stays at the same dynamic before falling away, The Cure’s version isn’t so friendly. From the song’s start, the listener is thrown into the deep end with layers of strings, as Smith sounds like he’s on his knees, begging to be loved. Whereas the song might be about one emotion, Smith’s version is a much better depiction of what love entails, showing equal parts of the sweet and sour side of love. If Lennon’s ‘Love’ felt like flying in a dream, then The Cure showed a nightmare trying to get back to happier times.
