To round off our Ten Days of The Cure celebration we asked artists for their favourite songs by The Cure read the responses below!
Meryl Streek
‘A Night Like This’
Definitely one of my favorite tracks ever. I found that cassette and also Rage Against The Machine‘s first album on a tape that belonged to my mam and dad. I used to listen to them daily on repeat for years. But that song is just so dark and utterly brilliant. Long live The Cure.
Lille Venn
‘In Between Days’
I’d butcher any attempt at explaining why ‘In Between Days’ is my favourite Cure song – I think that would be much like trying to explain why you love someone – you can think of 100 reasons why and none at the same time. I was 16 when I first heard it. It was one of the first songs I truly fell in love with and I think it even fooled me into thinking I was in love with the boyfriend I had at the time, who I played it for over and over. 10 years later, I’d see The Cure in Oslo. Hearing it live just a few weeks ago confirmed my hypothesis that I was in fact just a hopeless romantic for the song, and that I’ll still feel the same way when I’m much older than I was when I first heard it.
Pulled Apart By Horses (Robert Lee, Guitar and Vocals)
‘Lullaby’
I first heard this when I was really young, just a kid. Way before I was really into bands or rock music. I think the video was on TOTP and it was on the radio a lot. It instantly stuck in my consciousness, it really did something to me. I’ve always had trouble sleeping, I used to have a lot of nightmares and night terrors. So it was kind of familiar and exciting to all of a sudden hear something like this just out in the open, it was equally scary and comforting. If you read the lyrics it’s really dark subject matter and a lot of pop music was very polite and upbeat around that time. I had no idea what he was singing about, I was too young, but nevertheless it spoke to me somehow. It wasn’t until a lot later on that I discovered the album Disintegration. Let’s face it, that album is a Goth Masterpiece. It’s so vast and atmospheric that you’re shivering from start to finish, and there is ‘Lullaby’, tucked away right in the middle. When I’m feeling low I put that album on and sink into it. I can safely blame Lullaby for my darker more Gothic tastes which I’ve tried to bring into PABH at certain points, I think you can hear some of its influence on our Blood album.
The Subways
‘Distintegration’
The title track from the Disintegration album is by far and away my favourite Cure song. The looping of that melancholic bass line mixed with the pounding and bouncing of the drums makes for such a compelling rhythm section, circling round and round for the full 8 minutes of the song. As the song progresses, the intertwining synth and guitar lines compound and rise from the periphery of the speakers and to the fore. As this happens, Robert Smith’s vocal performance grows heavier and heavier in its yearning, reaching notes further up the scale. All these elements make ‘Disintegration’ a song that you could equally dance and despair to. A beloved combination of mine.
Feral Five
‘Close To Me’
The Cure are an inspiration to Feral Five. They bring out pop’s darker side with their post-punk vibe and proto-Goth energy. Yet there was always a joyful optimism coursing through their work. From first hearing ‘A Forest’ (although not necessarily on a Friday), I was in love! Listening to the Cure progress from post-punk innovators to pop star infiltrators was a joy. If I had to choose one song I probably couldn’t, but something that has always resonated the often pathos-to-bathos lyrical nature of the Cure is ‘Close To Me’ from the Head On The Door album.
Robert Smith has a knack of writing pop tunes that seem to poke fun at the darker side of our collective psyches in a brilliant child-like yet insightful way. As a bass player the riff seemed so innocuous, so simple, and yet the complexity of the production and the Cure’s fearless embracing of avant-garde themes and sounds is what makes them more than just a pop band. The song was initially released in 1985 and had a remix for 1990, updating the beats. The original video directed by Tim Pope is still a standout piece of art in its own right. It drags the viewer, not unlike Robert Smith’s hair, through a hedge backwards, out of the natural world and back from our comfy collective Narnia into the wardrobe itself – there to stay until the song breaks down triumphantly trumpetly! The brilliant trancelike production brings you right into Smith’s head, on the door and anywhere else. Captain Bob and his merry band will continue to rock, roll and tumble our world, smashing our preconceptions of what pop is and what it can be. Vive Le Cure; saviours of rock ‘n’ roll.
Smut
‘2 Late’
One of my favorites is ‘2 Late‘, a short and simple tune that’s filled with super sweet, swooning melodies and longing lyrics. Robert Smith’s trademark overwhelmingly melancholic vibe ties everything together. Smith was “sure it would be a single,” but thought it didn’t fit with the more involved Disintegration direction they were leaning. The B-side to ‘Lovesong,’ it does a similar thing in cutting to the core of a song without any real abstractions or confusing poetic lyrics. It’s a meditation on how you can show someone your love, how it can be hard to time it up just right, and how we can be left feeling our efforts were just 2 late.
The Photocopies
Remember when New Order released ‘All The Way‘, allegedly a deliberate rip-off of a Cure song as payback for all the times The Cure allegedly ripped off New Order? Well, to be fair, The Cure were actually very good at using their New Order influences to create excellent pop songs. ‘In Between Days‘ is a perfect example of that. Without Robert Smith’s distinctive voice, it could almost be New Order… but it’s still definitely The Cure. I’m occasionally guilty of using the sounds of other artists as inspiration to write a song. You hear a song, you love it, and think, “I’d like to create a song like that.” As long as the end result is good and not outright plagiarism, who cares? It’s all good.
Perennial
‘Friday I’m In Love’
The Cure had written plenty of perfect pop songs before this one—songs that were impeccably crafted and impossibly catchy (‘Close To Me’, ‘In Between Days’)—but ‘Friday I’m In Love’ accomplishes something really unique: it manages to be just as catchy as the band’s best singles, while keeping all the idiosyncrasies and rainy-day romance of their deepest album cuts.
It’s a Top 40 gem, but on The Cure’s terms. Those chiming guitars, those echoing harmonies, that midnight atmosphere and moonlit poetry. It’s all there, but dreamily wedded to classic pop craft: the days of the week structure (“Tuesday’s gray and Wednesday too / Thursday I don’t care about you”) evokes classic Motown in its clever, expansive use of its premise; the shift from chorus (if you can even single out any one part as the “chorus” in a song so full of hooks) to post-chorus blooms like a Beatles bridge, with an extra post-punk kick in its angular guitar. The next time the song comes on over a loudspeaker in a department store, you might notice just how much more poetic and impressionistic everything seems to be. It’s the sort of song that comes with its own cinematography. ‘Friday I’m In Love‘ is a sweeping, effervescent gift that keeps on giving, flawlessly put together yet always ready to burst.
Ben Narcis
‘Boys Don’t Cry’
The Cure were and remain mammoth figures, from their woolly locks and frostbitten skin to their sturdy, powerful and surprisingly vulnerable songs of love and tenderness.
Two memories will stick with me forever. In the first, I was 13. Dragged along to a super dull function in Birmingham magistrates court (because why not?), a girl my age shared a headphone. I’d never heard anything like it. ‘Boys don’t cry’ is intractably associated in my mind with with that first bout of teenage longing, and was one of the most powerful early impressions of how music can transport you from dour surroundings to somewhere shared, and beautiful.
The second was from around the same time, when Robert smith joined a band I was seeing onstage for a rendition of love cats. It was the first time I’d ever crowd-surfed, and although I was escorted out of the venue and made to trudge the long and lonely trudge back to the main gate, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Declan Welsh and The Decadent West
‘Just Like Heaven’
One of the first bits of music that was ever gifted to me was a greatest hits of the cure album by my mum when I was about 12 or 13. I instantly fell in love with the band, the versatility, the hooks, the weirdness.
My favourite tune of theirs has always been and will always be just like heaven. I think it’s a beautiful song. It’s otherworldly. It has the quality in it that all great love songs have of making you feel in love. It takes you to that place where you are totally overwhelmed by how in love you are with someone else. I adore that song and I think the cure are absolutely amazing.
Public Body
‘A Forest’
There are too many great Cure songs but this one always seems to stick out for me. Obviously has the classic erieee cure feel, I’m way more into their darker depressing stuff, but this one seems to mix it up and be quite uplifting somehow. The production is great, weird sounds way too loud and vocal mixed way lower than anyone would nowadays kinda draws you in. I like how the lyrics are basically about getting lost in a forest looking for that girl but also just a small section of the song and the rest Is basically an instrumental jam wig out, as I’m not one for listening to lyrics I always get bored and basically just end up realising I’m just listening to the other stuff haha!
Ellur
‘Plainsong
The Cure are one of my favourite bands and have had a massive influence on my music and aesthetic as an artist.
‘Plainsong’ is the perfect combination of dreamy, chorusy guitars, fizzy synths, glistening percussion and the unbeatably unique vocal performance of Robert Smith. The soft, half-spoken lyrics are reflected perfectly within the music and sit so comfortably in the song. There is the sense of some grand ending which has found itself at the start of something. In this case, at the start of the album. What an opening song.
It’s a song that reminds me of every season and creates a certain nostalgia for me for an era I never experienced; a time I’ve never known. I pine for the 80s. The eyeliner and the suits, the music and the long introductions.
I wish I could’ve been there.
Deep Tan
‘Lullaby’
Wafah: It’s very hard for me to choose my favourite Cure song as they’ve been my favourite band as long as I’ve been actively listening to music. Up there would probably be a tie between ‘Killing An Arab’ and ‘Lullaby’, though.
‘Lullaby’ – from their album Disintegration – is so beautifully melancholic, and I used to listen to it on repeat growing up. Robert Smith is a master at conjuring emotion in his songs, and particularly memorable for me in his tracks where his sadness also feels soothing.
The production in ‘Lullaby’ (as in most Cure songs) really stands out. The jangly guitars and staccato violin together feel quite sinister, and the overall mood – with its simple drumbeat and bass loop – is really hypnotic. The song has a lot of space in between the instruments, each with their own unique place. I’m really into that kind of minimal production, where we can hear all the components. I’ve never been into the ‘wall of sound’ approach. Robert Smith’s vocal delivery, almost whispered, is nonchalant but still affecting. I love it.
In ‘Spiderman’, I’ve read that Robert Smith wrote it about nightmares. When I listen to it, the presence of lurking shadow fears and the control they have really comes across. Like a lot of what The Cure do, it’s an unusual, unexpected take on the subject. “I feel like I’m being eaten by a thousand million shivering furry holes” is a lyric you don’t hear every day.
The cobweb-as-digestive tract in the music video – directed by their long time visual collaborator Tim Pope
– looking like lace, with Robert Smith’s Joker-esque makeup, is iconic in the truest of ways, and so memorable. I also like that it shows the ironic and silly side of them as a band.
The Cure: absolute masters of their craft. Their strange vision, their intricate and sophisticated production, their darkness … these are just a few things they do so well that keep me coming back.
Chorus Girl
‘Untitled’
The next best approximation to time travel is music, and now that I’ve had to move back in with my Dad into my childhood home, I spent a lot of last summer revisiting the listening habits of my youth. This was an interesting exercise, sometimes the first few bars of certain songs giving me a real rush of euphoria. I listened to The The, The Pixies, Nirvana, Suzanne Vega, Tears for Fears, but nothing hit me quite as much as listening to Disintegration by The Cure — what an album!
One of my favourite songs on this album is ‘Untitled’, the album closer. As on most songs on this album, the vocals come in well past the 1-minute mark. Common in the 80s, less so now sadly. The music has so much space to breathe and unfold without any vocals crowding it out or vying for attention. The accordion-like synth riff ropes you in and then a beautiful tom fill hits you right in the heart and sets off the song. The drums are delicious and perfect, with booming toms and a snare that sounds like something between a pistol shot and whiplash. Beautiful synths and interweaving guitar and bass lines, every instrument has space to breathe, and in the end a fade-out that just leaves the synth riff as a bookend. The perfect album closer.
