The Cure song about the death of Robert Smith’s grandparents
There is a commonality between much of The Cure‘s artistic output over the decades: a dreaded sense of gloom. While songs such as ‘Just Like Heaven’ and ‘Lovesong’ may reek of sugary pop brilliance, they are also underwritten by a guarantee of murky misery provided, invariably, y the band’s steadfast leader, Robert Smith. But, despite the perception the outside world have of Smith and his band, there aren’t any songs in their catalogue which are determinedly dark and doom-laden. There is one, however, which sticks out as sculpted by sadness.
The Cure are a lot more than goth poster boys. The group have developed a trademark sound that continues to play tricks on itself, forever masking the dark and morose within candy-pop flavours, while sugar is drenched in the sweat and tears of gloomy goth rock to make some of the more potent combinations of recent times. It’s a juxtaposing combination that has made The Cure quite possibly the ultimate cult band.
The group found their feet following the incendiary embers of punk had begun to die down. From the small town of Crawley, Smith and his bandmates would emerge as post-punk heroes, perfecting an angular sound that would thud into the night and allow the group to develop far more sophisticated imagery with their lyrics than punk would have ever hoped to have achieved. By 1981, the group had reached their comfort zone and were starting to make good on their dark image.
The Cure’s 1981 album Faith will likely remind any diehard fan of a time when The Cure became a fully-realised band. Away from their searing post-punk debut and amid a further pursuit of the new sound on Seventeen Seconds, the band had begun cultivating a brand new sonic landscape that would dominate their style for the decade to come.
‘The Funeral Party’ is perhaps the standout number from an album that showed that The Cure were about to become real icons of the music world. But the track is deeply connected to personal sadness for Robert Smith as the song tackles how he dealt with the death of his grandparents. Speaking with Rockerilla in 1983, Smith opened up about the song and the experience that prompted its origination: “When someone you know dies, you suddenly realise what death is.”
“Something takes shape in your mind,” continued Smith. “It’s not an indefinite, abstract entity anymore. Even if my parents are still alive, I could understand; it opened my eyes, you face great changes. My lyrics are a miscellany of images taken from my mind. I never think of a specific subject to develop.”
He added,” ‘Killing An Arab‘ or ‘Fire In Cairo’ were based on specific subjects, but now it doesn’t happen anymore. It’s not just personal images, but also events involving other people, real or imaginary ones. The music has changed along with my changing feelings. It wasn’t something I decided: it’s a spontaneous evolution caused by a certain moment’s stimulus.”
The song is rich in imagery and deeply coveted by the group’s fans. it also had a larger impact on music, giving the American alt-rock group Funeral Party, their name. Singer Chad Elliot said of the name: “We chose the name Funeral Party because it was just the most depressing song I’d ever heard… it was the perfect name for a band like ours because we come from this jail town: no one gets out until they’re dead. We also liked the name because it sounded like a hardcore band, but it had the word ‘party’ in it, so it fit in on the East LA dance party fliers. Initially, that name tricked people into seeing us.”
Aside from naming a new band, the song has been routinely enjoyed by The Cure fans but has never been picked up for any sort of sizable cover. When you consider the vast array of covers of The Cure’s canon, it leads us to believe that nobody dares attempt this song because, firstly, it may be too personal, but most probably, because it is a definition of what makes The Cure so great in the first place.
