The Cure album that led Robert Smith to a breakdown: “Just couldn’t cope with it any more”
Something weird seemed to happen in the 1980s and ‘90s, when suddenly, the biggest bands in the world were ones that you’d least expect, and the one act that least expected it was The Cure.
It seems like a strange complaint; we assume that all musicians want to be famous, nursing a desire to be celebrated and world-renowned, as it comes with the territory. Typically, we also assume that there is always a level of ego that runs alongside artistry, pouring out as the desire to have the biggest crowds, the best-selling albums and bagging those number one trophies, but for a lot of people, that’s just not the truth at all.
Instead, their art comes from a deep, dark, almost shy place, as part of the person’s necessity to express themself in some way, but that doesn’t mean that they want a huge crowd watching them go through it. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, when genres like post-punk, goth and grunge became huge, these reluctant celebrities were everywhere. The music too lent itself to that mindset as darker songs typically came from darker personalities, like Kurt Cobain, Morrissey and The Cure’s own Robert Smith.
Watch seconds of literally any interview with Smith and it’s obvious that the singer never wanted to be a celebrity; he simply wanted to make his music, but then, suddenly, by the early ’90s, he was famous. Slowly, for years, things had been building, and the band had been playing bigger and bigger venues, but with this next step, the ante was up ever more, reaching a place that Smith felt utterly uncomfortable with.
Their 1992 album Wish solidified their status as tracks like ‘Friday I’m In Love’ and ‘High’ performed admirably on the charts, bringing them a fresh wave of attention. It became their highest charting album and their most commercially successful, and so naturally, the scale of everything was upped.
“Wish was number one in pretty much every chart in the world, and we were playing giant football stadiums,” the singer recalled, which would be a dream for many, but for him, it was a kind of nightmare. “Our success had escalated to the point where I just couldn’t cope with it any more, and so I had my own version of a breakdown,” he said.
His version of a breakdown was to completely retreat: “That’s when I took a break for a few years,” he said as the band disappeared on a hiatus. His version of a breakdown was also to completely rebel, as when they did eventually return, they came back with Wild Mood Swings, their lowest-selling album that rejected any of the things that had caught attention on the last record, as if Smith was purposefully trying to push the crowd away.
Obviously, though, given that The Cure remains an enduring and beloved name in music, that didn’t work; he couldn’t shake the fans off that easily, so he merely had to get used to the masses.
