The best pop song The Cure ever wrote, according to Robert Smith
In today’s world, The Cure has achieved the impossible. Not only has their appeal lasted long enough never to need any sort of resurgence, but their music has changed and developed while still holding onto the crux of what made them thrive in the first place. All of this is, of course, spearheaded by a certain Robert Smith, whose mind understands that true melancholy comes from life’s beautiful ambiguities.
While the weird and wonderful world of The Cure becomes more complex and convoluted the deeper you explore, there’s an inexplicable consistency that threads throughout their entire body of work. For instance, if you were to venture into a record store, pick up a copy of Songs of a Lost World, and stick it under the needle for the first time, you’d instantly recognise the signature essence of the band without it coming across as a poor imitation of their early work.
In fact, the band’s music thrives on constantly journeying forward, even if the basic premise of Smith’s messages and lyricism remain similar. And that’s precisely where he mastered the delicate balance of appealing to nostalgia without reinventing the wheel. After all, many “legacy” musicians are still going at it, but few manage to capture a semblance of the same appeal they did in their peak years. And yet, here are The Cure, doing exactly that.
While many songs come equipped with the unmistakeable Cure sound, including ‘Lovesong’, ‘Close To Me’, Friday I’m In Love’, ‘Lullaby’, and the more recent ‘Alone’, the one that Smith claims to rise above the rest when it comes to incorporating everything that categories their appeal was actually ‘A Forest’. In his words, this track signalled “the turning point” for the band when people started “thinking we could achieve something”.
It’s easy to see why—it ticks all boxes when it comes to everything you might be after when listening to The Cure, including an ethereal build-up blanketed by broader haunting strokes of genius, until Smith’s words take you on an unwarranted journey into navigating the feeling of being lost amid the chaos. All of which is punctuated gloriously by a consistent rhythmic beat, evoking the kind of darkwave viscera that kickstarted the 1980s.
However, while that undeniably changed the entirety of their trajectory, it wasn’t exactly mainstream by nature, contrasting with some of the band’s more pop-leaning, accessible tracks destined for endless radio play. Among these were, of course, songs like ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, but even that, according to Smith, wasn’t their best go of it, at least not when it came to exercising pop tropes. According to the frontman, the best pop song they ever wrote was actually ‘Just Like Heaven’.
Describing the song as “the best pop song The Cure has ever done”, Smith also reflected on how it came together while praising one of its most revered covers: “All the sounds meshed, it was one take, and it was perfect,” he said, adding, “I love Dinosaur Jr’s version of the song, and they’ve influenced how we play it.” While the song still remains loyal to the band’s usual heady, downbeat charm, it also adopts an accessible structure and progression with a melody that lingers, making it destined to become one of their most timeless pieces.
