The five best covers of ‘Lovesong’ by The Cure
There’s a degree to which the success of The Cure is slightly baffling. This is a band of post-punk misanthropes featuring the ex-guitarist of Siouxsie and the Banshees. Their music often consists of haunting dirges stretching towards the ten-minute mark. Still, they became one of the biggest bands in the world for a hot minute. Playing NFL stadiums on their 1989 Disintegration world tour and making a worldwide celebrity out of their lead singer, Robert Smith.
Perhaps it makes more sense when you remember that Robert Smith is one of the best pop songwriters of his generation. Sure, those haunting dirges did litter their albums the way hairspray fumes mark their concerts, but they were always built around an unforgettable riff or melody. Then, there’s the real reason they graduated from awkward goths to mainstream sensations—having one of the greatest singles collections in British rock.
‘Pictures of You’, ‘Friday, I’m In Love’, ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, ‘The Lovecats’… I could go on, so I will; ‘Let’s Go To Bed’, ‘Just Like Heaven’, ‘In Between Days’, ‘Close To Me’. Well, you get the picture, it’s an embarrassment of riches. Arguably the biggest hit of all of them, though, especially in the US, where it reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, was Disintegration’s third single, ‘Lovesong’.
A simple, plaintive ballad and one of the most nakedly personal things Smith ever wrote, it’s a song that several other artists have doffed their caps to. As The Cure comes up to their fifth decade of existence, let’s look at five of the best takes on one of the best songs of the 1980s.
The five best covers of ‘Lovesong’ by The Cure:
Adele
If there’s one version of Lovesong on this list you’ve already heard, it’s this one. Adele Adkins has phenomenal taste in covers, having also made the Bob Dylan classic ‘Make You Feel My Love’ utterly her own on her first album. With this song, she comes closest to anyone to nicking the song straight from under the nose of Robert Smith and Co, and not simply on the strength of her astonishing voice either. It’s old hat by now that Adele could sing your eviction notice and make you weep tears of joy.
The Bossa-nova, orchestral arrangement of the song wrings a sophisticated drama out of the song that not even the original could muster. It’s almost unfair that a songwriter of Adele’s calibre is also a covers artist of such extraordinary ability, but so long as she’s sharing both those gifts with us, then I think we can forgive her for it.
Kevin Devine
Devine actually covered this song with his Goddamn Band on a split single with fellow fourth-wave emo-lifers, Tiger’s Jaw. However, that is not the cover I’m talking about here. Instead, it’s a much more stripped-back version Devine recorded for a Nervous Energies session, pairing the song simply with his trembling voice and a Spanish guitar. Now, I’m as wary as anyone about white men with acoustic guitars covering anything, but this makes the cut with aplomb.
If Tori Amos’ version pushes the intimacy of the song to the forefront, Devine’s takes the isolation and runs with it. Every whisper of his voice magnified, every run on his fretboard echoing—he sounds like a man alone with only the memory of someone lost to him keep him company. It’s a testament to the depth of Smith’s songwriting that one can wring two fundamentally different readings out of the same song, and have them still speak to the original so eloquently.
Death Cab For Cutie
As the poster for indie-rock soft boys, Death Cab For Cutie, covering a song by The Cure, comes across like a passing of the torch from one generation of alternative rock to another. Recorded for a compilation album supporting Unicef’s relief effort for the Boxing Day Tsunami, the album kicks off with Ben Gibbard’s crew taking on one of Disintegration‘s many high points. While it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, there’s no real reason why it should.
As a band that probably wouldn’t exist without Robert Smith’s mob this is, fittingly enough for the title and the album it was recorded for, an act of love. The more grounded, home-recorded feel of their cover highlights that the original’s depth comes not from production mastery or studio trickery. It comes from a band playing at the peak of their powers, as Death Cab would prove with their next album the same year, Plans.
Snake River Conspiracy
Oftentimes, the best covers come from a band willing to take a song and completely up-end it. It may have been something of a red flag when LA industrial rock band Snake River Conspiracy put no less than five cover songs on their 2000 debut album (a record cringe-inducingly titled Sonic Jihad). However, when they still sound as fresh as this version of ‘Lovesong’ does a quarter of a century later, you can forgive a lot, apart from that title.
Joking aside, though, turning a gentle indie-pop track into a raucous, industrial rave banger that barely sounds like it shares a chord sequence with the original is a bold move. This one speaks to The Cure’s place, not just on the pop or indie-rock scene but also in the alternative underground. It may not quite justify the album’s title, but it more than justifies its place on this list.
Tori Amos
Recorded for a KROQ radio session in 1993 and widely bootlegged thereafter, Amos takes the unmistakable synth strings that break up the verses and turn them into a tumbling, dramatic piano hook. It’s an intoxicating beginning to an irresistible vision of the song. One that turns Smith’s ghostly lament into a red-blooded torch song, focussing less on “however far away” and more on “I will always love you”.
It’s a much more human take on the song that suits Amos’ quavering, arresting delivery. The depth of The Cure’s original lies in the implication that whatever feelings the song’s subject is making Smith feel, he doesn’t feel them very often. By making a more straightforward, erm, love song out of it, Amos makes one of the most intimate moments of The Cure’s discography a much warmer, sultrier place to be.
