Why The Cure will never censor their most controversial song
For better or worse, modern-day artists have to be prepared to defend their ideas and explain their work. The history of rock music is positively littered with controversy, some instances questionable and others downright condemnable. As The Cure discovered, with the evolution of Western values over the past half-century, historical art is subject to scrutiny and censorship.
Legendary artists such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones have been called out in recent years for some of their more questionable songs, such as the former’s ‘Run For Your Life’ and the latter’s ‘Brown Sugar’. Such cases can usually be brushed off as relics of a bygone era, provided they are appropriately censored or removed from modern setlists. But what if an artist refuses to submit to modern appraisal?
If The Beatles and the Stones tripped on a few wires in the 1960s, the punk era ran carefree with blindfolds applied. Nothing quite yells “controversy” with such aggression as the image of The Stooges sauntering onstage clad in Nazi uniforms. Taking cues from Iggy Pop and his merry men, the post-punk wave witnessed a similarly disconcerting obsession with modern history. Quintessential proponents Joy Division famously named themselves after the Jewish prostitution wings of Nazi concentration camps and emblazoned their first EP, An Ideal For Living, with a Hitler youth recruit.
Should we assume, therefore, that Iggy Pop and Ian Curtis were racist neo-Nazis? Of course not; the punks had a discerning eye for irony and flirted fervently with controversy. After all, there is no such thing as bad publicity, and with shock factor at the centre of the arts for the best part of a century, a pinch of salt should perhaps be a custom by now.
Honing in to the matter at hand, the Sussex-born post-punk group The Cure has generally evaded the controversy radar throughout its 45-year history. However, the band’s most disputed song, ‘Killing an Arab’, arrived at the very beginning of its discographic journey, stoking the flames of debate ever since.
Frontman Robert Smith wrote ‘Killing an Arab’ while still in secondary school and recorded it as The Cure’s very first single in 1978. It was later included on the band’s 1979 debut album, Three Imaginary Boys. The lyrics, described frequently as racist and inappropriate, read, “I’m alive / I’m dead / I’m the stranger / killing an Arab” in the chorus.
In a 2001 interview with the now-defunct Canadian music magazine Chart Attack, Smith discussed the track, claiming that he “had no idea that anyone would ever listen to it, other than my immediate school friends.”
The choice of Smith’s to kill an Arab could undoubtedly be construed as racist if it were derived that the singer had any pent-up grievances with the ethnic group. However, as many pundits past and present have failed to note, the song doesn’t reference Smith’s personal persuasions, nor is it an offering of ill-conceived irony; instead, it is based on the plot of Albert Camus’s famous existentialist novella, L’Étranger or The Stranger.
In the book, the titular character faces a predicament in which he must decide whether or not to murder a man on the beach. Smith loosely summarises the philosophical inference in the third verse: “I can turn and walk away, or I can fire the gun / Staring at the sky, staring at the sun / Whichever I choose, it amounts to the same / Absolutely nothing”.
Again, in these lyrics, Smith does not postulate that it matters not whether he murders an Arab. Instead, Camus chose this life-and-death scenario to examine his existential quandary, which simply happened to involve a character depicted in the book as a member of a local Arab community.
Indeed, Camus’s choice to pose his Arab character as an unnamed enemy has called into question a case of racial bias. The French author was an outspoken opponent of Algerian independence, but the jury’s out as to whether he harboured any prejudices against Arabic people. This is a longstanding discussion, but Camus’s daughter Catherine has maintained for many years that “he was no racist”.
As for The Cure, when they performed at Kingston Polytechnic in 1979, Smith was asked not to include ‘Killing an Arab’ in the set over concerns of racist connotations. The song underwent censorship in several countries, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee requested that it be recalled from record stores.
Ultimately, The Cure agreed that the singles compilation Standing on a Beach should be marketed with a note denouncing racial interpretations. The note read: “The song Killing an Arab has absolutely no racist overtones whatsoever. It is a song which decries the existence of all prejudice and consequent violence. The Cure condemn its use in furthering anti-Arab feeling.”
In a 2016 interview, The Cure’s co-founding drummer, Lol Tolhurst, explained that the song “was about alienation and existentialism – things more relevant to us then. Obviously, events of the last two decades have changed the perception of the song’s meaning. Totally erroneously, I might add, as it has nothing to do with racism or killing at all.”
As quoted in Walter Everett’s 2000 book Expression in Pop-Rock Music, Smith once opined that the song was only misunderstood by those who didn’t take The Cure seriously. “It’s just through the incredible stupidity of certain DJs that the whole thing ballooned into a controversy,” Smith said. “If anything, the song is more well-known in Europe, and it’s always been understood. In America, I think we’re known for making wacky videos, whereas [in Europe] we’ve got a history as a serious group.”
Listen to The Cure’s most controversial song below.
