The band Robert Smith said missed the point of rock and roll
Robert Smith knows a thing or two about rock and roll.
In 2025, Smith might’ve sparked the loudest roar from any crowd that year when he joined pop-rock sensation Olivia Rodrigo on stage during her Glastonbury set. The pair tore through a blistering version of The Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven’, much to the crowd’s delight. Later on, snaps surfaced of them downing shots backstage. The happy hooliganism of mainstream rock was in full bloom.
Rodrigo’s fanbase is certainly on the young side. The simplistic, anthemic choruses usher in a barrage of TikTok dancing, pom-pom swinging teenagers who are enjoying the quiet rock sensibilities in her golden pop goo. Plus, Rodrigo started as a Disney star, and made her big break with the ballad ‘Drivers Licence’, which explicitly grounds the listener in being 17, finally passing the test to drive freely on the roads. We all know what comes next: Ford Ka’s parked at the dead-end of dark roads, Billie Eilish on the speakers.
What am I trying to get at here? Well, Smith’s endorsement of Rodrigo, given the young impressionability of her fan base, is interesting if we take into consideration the previous comments the singer-songwriter made about another band, which he said missed the entire point of rock and roll.
While chatting with The Guardian, Smith fired hard and fast at Suede, the London band formed in 1989. The band are “just rehashing old Bowie songs,” Smith said, adding, “It’s kind of missing the point, but probably if you’re 16 or 17, it is the point”.
We might take this to mean that Smith hates the happy-go-lucky sensibilities of young rock… Exactly what Miss Rodrigo has on offer. Perhaps Smith has had a change of heart in the 12 years since slagging off Suede in a major newspaper.
So, what is the point of rock and roll, then? To draw us all toward alternate modes of thinking, sprung forth in the friction between a furious drum-roll, a catchy bass hook, a sublime pad on the synth, and a terribly grisly vocal line singing about disillusionment and alienation? Is it to give us something to jerk our fists to, in the air, so we don’t start throttling one another?
Whatever it is for Smith, he didn’t really clarify. Instead, he continued, “But having been around 34 years now, I’m seeing things being reworked and it probably didn’t happen before, before the ’60s, because everything was being invented. I suppose a lot of house and techno and rave is new. I listen to a lot of dance music at home, some of the really out there stuff. I don’t dance to it, I just listen. It’s really hypnotic.”
This is pretty defeatist if you ask me: The 1960s signalling the end of musical invention (specifically rock music), ushering us into an age of repetition and sonic plagiarism? I hope that today, Smith has given the new Geese record a spin and officially proved himself wrong.
