“This is the one that cracks through”: The Cure song with a hidden reference to another hit
The Cure frontman Robert Smith has always been a master at curating thematically dense music. While much of their sound centres around ambiguities, generating their own flavour of melancholy that draws from light and dark, many of the lyrics stem from Smith’s adoration of the greats. One song, in particular, holds a direct nod to another vocal powerhouse who knew the power of a good love ballad.
While The Cure remains one of the most relevant rock acts in the current landscape, Smith has experienced his share of certainty. For starters, the band has almost split up more than once, and there have been countless times when judgment almost surpassed Smith’s desire to stay in the industry. After all, decorating your face with eyeliner and lipstick isn’t always embraced so readily in the rock space, even less if you’re a male singer.
That said, challenges aside, The Cure’s sound has always been difficult to pin down to a single influence, making their presence feel entirely unique and isolated from the sounds of their era. Aside from the obvious influences, like the adjacent Siouxsie and the Banshees and other dark wave acts, The Cure redefined what it meant to create euphoric atmospheres that centred on life’s more intricate emotional experiences.
Between these lines, much of their music draws from Smith’s personal experiences, weaving them into his narratives like subtle checkpoints along the way. These aren’t always easily detectable, but one that stands out more than others is in the hit anthem ‘Lovesong’. Smith wrote it for his wife, Mary, as a wedding present, including it in Disintegration as a grand romantic gesture.
Somewhere in his quest to make the song as tooth-rottenly sweet as possible, he added a delicate nod to Frank Sinatra’s ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ after the second verse, something he usually doesn’t do as willingly, showing that this track ventured somewhat outside of his usual terrain as a tool for exploring his romantic haze. Despite the seemingly out-of-place reference, it seems entirely rooted in Smith’s unspoken hunch about the song’s success, knowing (or hoping) that it wouldn’t overshadow any of the others on the record.
In fact, despite its lovelorn foundations, Smith wasn’t entirely happy when the song soared up the charts and felt it didn’t accurately or appropriately represent everything he tried to achieve with Disintegration. As he later reflected, “I thought it was the weakest song on there, and suddenly it went to number two in America. I thought, Of all the songs I’d written, this is the one that cracks through. It was quite disappointing.”
Still, despite the ongoing success of ‘Lovesong’, it’s clear the album remains one of their best releases, showcasing everything great about Smith’s artistic vision. From start to finish, it ticks all the boxes, offering an insightful glimpse into one of history’s most creative musical minds. And despite his reservations, ‘Lovesong’ remains an integral part of that appeal, proving that he is just as proficient at crafting simple love songs as he is at composing more detailed and intricate soundscapes.
