Music / The Cure (Band)

"Disintegration is the best album ever!"

— Kyle Broflovski, South Park, "Mecha-Streisand"

Influences:

• Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Brian Eno, Roxy Music, Sex Pistols, The Kinks, Led Zeppelin, Billie Holiday, The Beatles

Influenced:

• The Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, My Chemical Romance, Deftones, Jane's Addiction, The Killers, Interpol, CHVRCHES, Pale Waves, Chevelle

An influential English Goth Rock band formed in 1976 and one of the earliest successful Alternative Rock bands (alongside R.E.M. and The Smiths), the Cure was formed as a response to Post-Punk and New Wave Music coming on the scene. They've had a ton of members over the years, but the one you most likely know is mastermind, guitarist, and nasal singer Robert Smith. For what it's worth, Lol Tolhurst was the band's original drummer, until he was sacked in 1989 (he wasn't drumming by then; he had been replaced by Boris Williams for five years) and is known for his now funny nickname ^note  "Lol" has been a British shorthand for Laurence / Lawrence long before the Memetic Mutation , and bassist Simon Gallup is the second longest serving member.

They started out a punk (or post-punk, depending on who you ask) band, but quickly moved into a goth phase with a purposeful anti-image and a generally somber outlook. After Pornography came out, Smith felt pigeonholed by their miserabilist image and wanted to escape from it. This and the turbulent recording of the album resulted in a temporary breakup, during which time Smith briefly joined Siouxsie and the Banshees as their guitarist. After the Cure regrouped, they shifted their music in a relatively Lighter and Softer direction, which was much more commercially successful. Once they'd reached real success, they returned to that image with Disintegration which won over the UK and gained them fans internationally. Their music ever since is just different degrees of accessibility vs. angst.

Despite their goth rock tag, they've also written pop songs, and dabbled in so many genres they're arguably close to eclectic territory.

Many bands like Jane's Addiction, The Smashing Pumpkins, My Chemical Romance, Deftones and Pale Waves cite them as an inspiration.

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Discography:

Studio albums

• Three Imaginary Boys (1979)
• Seventeen Seconds (1980)
• Faith (1981)
• Pornography (1982)
• The Top (1984)
• The Head on the Door (1985)
• Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (1987)
• Disintegration (1989)
• Wish (1992)
• Wild Mood Swings (1996)
• Bloodflowers (2000)
• The Cure (2004)
• 4:13 Dream (2008)

Compilations

• Boys Don't Cry (1980) - US equivalent of Three Imaginary Boys with a different tracklist that incorporates non-album singles like the title track.
• Happily Ever After (1981) - The band's second album in the US, which combined Seventeen Seconds and Faith onto one 2 LP set. Now long out of print.
• Japanese Whispers (1983) - collects the "Let's Go to Bed", "The Lovecats", and "The Walk" singles and their B-sides. The first Cure album to chart in the United States.
• Standing on a Beach: The Singles (1986) - Singles compilation featuring all of their A-sides through 1985. Highly popular in the U.S., one of their best-selling albums there, and fondly remembered by later alternative and indie musicians as their introduction to the Cure. The cassette version of the album all of the band's several B-sides that had yet to appear on an album. Retitled Staring at the Sea: The Singles for CD release with a few album tracks added in.
• Galore (1997) - Singles compilation picking up where Standing on a Beach left off and featuring their singles from 1987 to 1997.
• Greatest Hits (2001) - Career spanning greatest hits album
• Join the Dots: B-Sides & Rarities 1978–2001 (2004) - Box set of B-sides, rarities, contributions to compilations and soundtracks, and a few unreleased songs. The Cure's final release for their longtime home Fiction Records.

Remix albums

• Mixed Up (1990) - Best known for its hit remix of "Close to Me" and the exclusive single "Never Enough"
• Hypnagogic States EP (2008) - A remix EP for 4:13 Dream featuring contributions from members of Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, AFI, and Thirty Seconds to Mars
• Torn Down (2018) - A long-planned sequel to Mixed Up that was initially to feature contributions from other artists but the final version entirely consists of remixes by Robert Smith himself.

Live albums and video releases

• Concert: The Cure Live (1984)
• The Cure Live in Japan (1986) - video release
• The Cure in Orange (1987) - video release
• Entreat (1991)
• Show (1993) - also issued as a video release
• Paris (1993)
• The Cure Trilogy (2003) - video release
• Festival 2005 (2006) - also issued as a video release
• Bestival Live 2011 (2011)
• 40 Live (Curætion-25 + Anniversary) (2019) - also issued as a video release

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Tropes related to the band:

• Affably Evil: The most apt way to describe their music is "a gloomy Nice Guy experiencing a Cynicism Catalyst."
• Album Title Drop:
  • "Close to Me" for The Head on the Door.
  • Also, "The Kiss" and "Hey You!" for Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.
• The Alcoholic: The reason Lol Tolhurst was fired.
  • Pretty much every member was this at various points in history. The band drank a ton during the production of ''Pornography". In the early 90s, every member at the time with the exception of Boris Williams admitted to drinking a lot.
• All Drummers Are Animals: Andy Anderson, although more for his offstage behavior. During the tour to support The Top, he grew increasingly violent to the point where he ended up getting fired before the tour had even finished due to said behavior.
• Alternative Rock: From The Head on the Door onwards; they became one of the few 80s alternative artists (especially those who didn't resemble Grunge) who didn't wind up getting overshadowed in the US after Nirvana blew up.
• Break-Up Song: "Boys Don't Cry" and "The End of the World."
• Canon Discontinuity: In 1986, to promote Standing on a Beach: The Singles, the band released a new remix for "Boys Don't Cry" subtitled "New Voice New Mix" as a stand alone single. Upon its release, the band almost immediately decided it was a bad idea. Aside from its original single release, it has never appeared on another Cure release, not even on the band's career spanning (and otherwise complete) rarities box set Join the Dots, which ironically enough uses the iconic cover of the "New Voice New Mix" single as its cover image. The only way to hear it outside of owning the single is on the 1986 music video for "Boys Don't Cry" that appears on a few of the band's video collections.
• Careful with That Axe: The ending to "Subway Song", rather infamously.
• Chick Magnet: Robert Smith still has quite the sizable female fan base even in his sixties. Many of said fans are easily young enough to be his daughters or even granddaughters.
• Cover Version: A weird version of "Foxy Lady" by Jimi Hendrix shows up on their debut, and they covered "Purple Haze" on the Hendrix Tribute album Stone Free, The Doors' "Hello, I Love You" for the Elektra compilation Rubaiyat, Depeche Mode's "World in My Eyes," and David Bowie's "Young Americans" from Young Americans for B Sides. They've also been covered a few times, 311's "Lovesong" and Dinosaur Jr.'s "Just Like Heaven" covers being the most high profile.
• Crapsack World: "Jumping Someone Else's Train".
• Cute Clumsy Girl: The subject of "Catch" would fall down a lot.
• "Days of the Week" Song: "Friday I'm in Love."
• Defiled Forever: A possible case: at the end of "The Figurehead" Smith keeps repeating "I will never be clean again", which could be meant from the point of view of someone who just got raped/molested. Alternatively, it could be someone who feels they've crossed a Moral Event Horizon.
• "Double, Double" Title: The album, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.
• Dreadful Musician: Tolhurst's keyboard skills (or rather lack thereof) were the reason why his contribution to The Cure albums after Pornography was minimal, if any. And he wasn't the greatest drummer either — for example Pornography uses one single repeated beat per song, some of them sounding even very similar ("A Short Term Effect" and "A Strange Day"). Although Smith claimed that at that time he liked being restrained by Tolhurst inability to do any better.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Reeves Gabrels appeared on the "Wrong Number" single in 1997 (it was originally recorded for a Robert Smith / Jason Cooper side-project but got re-purposed). He wouldn't actually join the group properly until 2012, fifteen years later.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Three Imaginary Boys had little resemblance of the Goth Rock band they became on subsequent releases. The album was closer to classic Punk Rock.
• The End of the World as We Know It: "The End of the World", despite its title, is not actually about one. "A Strange Day" from Pornography, however, is.
• Epic Instrumental Opener: "The Kiss" starts with a 3 minutes guitar solo in a 6 minute song. "Fascination Street" also has 2 minutes of music before the vocals come in, again for a song that's just 5 minutes long.
• Epic Rocking: "Faith," the soundtrack to Carnage Visors, ^note  Their longest song, barreling over the 20 minute mark "One Hundred Years," "The Figurehead," "Pornography," "The Top," "The Kiss," "The Snakepit," "Pictures of You," "Prayers for Rain," "The Same Deep Water as You," "Disintegration," "Homesick," "Untitled," "Open," "Apart," "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea," "End," "Out of This World," "Watching Me Fall," "Bloodflowers," "Fear of Ghosts," "Burn," "Young Americans," "It Used to Be Me," and "Coming Up."
• Four More Measures: "In Between Days," "Fascination Street," and "Just Like Heaven" are prime examples.
• Genre Roulette: Just about any given Cure album will contain at least one song from one of the following genres: Post-Punk, Goth Rock, (more on that below) New Wave Music, general Alternative Rock (starting with The Head on the Door). This is best displayed on Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, where not only several songs from all four of those genres are featured, but Funk Rock, Dream Pop, Noise Rock and Synth-Pop are also present on the album.
• Goth Rock: Probably the band that comes to mind when the general public thinks of "goth rock," even though the band has many popular songs that are decidedly non goth, and indeed only a handful of their albums actually fit in the genre.
  • Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography are regarded as their goth era, but all of their albums since The Top have at least a few straight up Goth Rock songs, and some more that have many of the musical characteristics of the genre, but are somewhat more upbeat melodically (i.e. "In Between Days," "Just Like Heaven," and "Friday I'm in Love").
• Greatest Hits Album: Three — 1986's Standing on a Beach: The Singles (expanded on compact disc as Staring at the Sea, which features a couple album tracks), 1998's Galore (containing the singles released after Staring at the Sea, plus a newly recorded single, "Wrong Number"), and 2001's career spanning Greatest Hits (which also featured two new songs: "Cut Here" and "Just Say Yes").
• I Am the Band: Defied by Robert Smith. He's the sole constant member, the only one who appears on all their releases and is also the chief songwriter. However, he's stated that without bassist Simon Gallup (who has been a member since 1979, barring two brief hiatuses), the band wouldn't be The Cure.
• Inspired by…: "Charlotte Sometimes" and "The Empty World" are both inspired by Penelope Farmer's book Charlotte Sometimes; "Killing an Arab" derives from Albert Camus' The Stranger; and "A Letter to Elise" is about Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles. "All Cats Are Grey" and "The Drowning Man" are both based on Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels, the latter even addressing Fuchsia directly.
• Intentionally Awkward Title:
  • Pornography.
  • "Killing an Arab", which got the band wrongly accused of racism.
• Intercourse with You: "The Lovecats:"
  We should have each other for dinner
  We should have each other with cream.
  • "Siamese Twins" is a Darker and Edgier take on an Intercourse with You song, which is a song about wretched loathing while detailing a loss of virginity in the most poetically horrific terms. "The Real Snow White" and "Doing the Unstuck" are less explicit, but also much darker than the average poppy sex songs.
  • Also, on a happier note: "This. Here and Now. With You.," "The Only One," and "Mint Car." Oh, and "Let's Go to Bed," of course.
• The Invisible Band: Played with in the "Boys Don't Cry" video. A bunch of young boys are playing the song, while the real band is behind the curtain, visible only in silhouette.
• Last Note Nightmare:
  • The ear piercing scream on "Subway Song."
  • Also, to a lesser extent: "Pornography" ends with dissonant feedback increasing in pitch, until the track abruptly ends. Same thing with "End."
• Lead Bassist: Simon Gallup plays melodic basslines similar to Peter Hook.
• Lesser Star: Literally. Lol Tolhurst's alcohol abuse reached a peak, during the Disintegration sessions, and despite being credited for "other instruments," the band said he played absolutely nothing on the album, preferring to sit around, get drunk, and watch MTV, while the rest of the band bullied him (except Smith, who said his behaviour was like: "Some kind of handicapped child being constantly poked with a stick.") He was fired after a shouting match, over arriving excessively drunk to the album's mixing.
• Literary Allusion Title: "Killing an Arab" is named for part of the existentialist novel The Stranger by Albert Camus. "Charlotte Sometimes" refers to a book by Penelope Farmer.
• Looks Like Cesare: Robert Smith.
• Lyrical Cold Open: "Lost," which kicks off their 2004 Self-Titled Album.
• Lyrical Dissonance: Most of their songs.
  • The most notable aversion of this is "Friday I'm In Love" which is just a Silly Love Song listing the days of the week with no real deeper subtext.
• Men Don't Cry: The subject of "Boys Don't Cry":
  I try to laugh about it, cover it all up with lies
  I try to laugh about it, hiding the tears in my eyes
  'Cause boys don't cry
  Boys don't cry
• Messy Hair: Smith, of course. After 1981, his hairstyle pretty much stayed in its unkempt state.
• Milking the Giant Cow: Robert Smith in pretty much any of their music videos. Dude loves waving his arms around.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Lol Tolhurst's contributions slowly diminished after he switched to keyboards, and he was finally fired from the band after spending the entirety of Disintegration drunk and watching MTV. He was credited with "Other Instruments" due to contractual obligations, but Robert and the band confirmed he contributed nothing.
  • Around the release of Bloodflowers, Robert mentioned he considered re-uniting every member of the Cure ever for a special occasion. When asked if he would invite Lol back, Robert joked he'd just have a cardboard cut-out of him instead. Despite this though, Lol would actually come back for a series of shows in 2011.
• Mood Dissonance: Most of their more pop oriented albums, such as: The Head on the Door or Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.
• Mood Whiplash: "The Kiss" a dark and angsty tune, to "Catch" with a poppy upbeat tune to it, on Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.
  • Wild Mood Swings even lampshades this. "Want" is dark and depressing, while "Club America," the next track, is set to the tune of a typical drinking song. Pretty much the whole album falls under this trope.
• New Sound Album: Their albums after Pornography either lower or increase the angst level.
• New Wave Music: Especially in latter two thirds of The '80s.
• Non-Appearing Title: "Lullaby" and "Lovesong" (although you can consider the titles of both describe the content of the song), "Mint Car," "Cut Here," among many others. "In Between Days" could also count, as the complete title doesn't appear.
• Not What It Looks Like: The Song "A Man Inside My Mouth". It talks of a wild party, with the protagonist falling asleep and waking up "with a man inside my mouth", despite the meaning seemingly being obvious, Word of God says it's about a time Robert Smith was on drugs at a party and woke up feeling like someone was talking through him like a puppet.
• Obsession Song: "Why Can't I Be You?" is the most obvious one.
• One-Word Title: Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me has a song called "Fight".
• Post-Punk: One of the main faces of the genre.
• Revolving Door Band: 13 members were in the band, with Smith being the only constant member. And that doesn't include those who were in the band, before they took the name The Cure.
• Sand In My Eyes: In "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea", the protagonist dismisses his emotional breakdown in the moment as "rain in his eyes", while simultaneously narrating that he is crying by following it up with the mention of tears.
  But suddenly she slows
  And looks down at my breaking face
  "Why do you cry? What did I say?"
  "But it's just rain", I smile
  Brushing my tears away
• Self-Backing Vocalist: Robert Smith sings pretty much, all vocals on the band's songs. The exceptions are: "I'm Cold" (B-Side to "Jumping Someone Else's Train"), which has backing vocals by Siouxsie Sioux, "Just Say Yes" with backing vocals from Saffron (lead vocalist of electronic rock band Republica) and "Foxy Lady" sung by Michael Dempsey.
• Sexy Cat Person: "The Lovecats" consists mostly of a whole string of feline metaphors for sex, including semi-orgasmic cat noises.
• Shout-Out: Robert Smith's look is inspired by Syd Barrett. The band's name is taken from a lyric by Nick Drake.
  • Many of their songs reference several literary works as documented above under Inspired by…
• Significant Anagram: "Cut Here" = "The Cure."
• The Something Song: "Lovesong", breaking formula a bit by creating a new compound word.
• Spiders Are Scary: "Lullaby". The spider man is having you for dinner tonight...
• Step Up to the Microphone: The Three Imaginary Boys cover of "Foxy Lady," was sung by bassist Michael Dempsey, because Robert Smith hated it. Thus, Dempsey's the only person not named Robert Smith, to sing lead vocals on a Cure album. Unless you technically count Simon Gallup, who sang on the unreleased demo for "The Violin Song."
• Studio Chatter: At the start of "Foxy Lady:"
  Robert Smith: "This is a good intro."
• Stylistic Suck: The B-Side "Do the Hansa" is a pisstake, at the expense of The Cure's first record label, Hansa Records, and their Executive Meddling. It features Disco styled guitar, bass melodies, silly voices with either Gratuitous German or German sounding gibberish, regular gibberish, and the few comprehensible lines are snarky Take Thats like: "Platinum all the way!" and "Do the Hansa!"
• The Something Song: "Lovesong," "Plainsong," and "The Violin Song."
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: "Doing the Unstuck:"
  It's a perfect day for doing the unstuck
  For dancing like you can't hear the beat
  And you don't give a f-f-further thought
  To things like feet.
• Surreal Music Video: Just about all they ever made.
• Take That!: The (in)famous "Robert Palmer" version of "A Forest" from the Werchter festival, Belgium, in 1981. A five minute song extended to nine minutes (after they've been told they can only have one more song), finished with Simon's: "Fuck Robert Palmer and fuck rock 'n' roll!" as they walked off stage.
  • From Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me there's a song called "Shiver and Shake," which Smith wrote for Tolhurst, expressing his frustration, at the latter's utter uselessness. When recording the song, Smith allegedly sang it right into Tolhurst's face. After Tolhurst was fired, Smith was often dissing him, such as calling his band Presence a joke.
  • Rob also took some shots at Morrissey, stating that "Morrissey's so depressing, if he doesn’t kill himself soon, I probably will" and "If Morrissey says not to eat meat, then I’m going to eat meat; that’s how much I hate Morrissey." The Smiths frontman fired back, stating that "The Cure (are) a new dimension to the word 'crap'" and called their frontman "a whinebag".
    • Morrissey initially started the "feud", when an interviewer asked Morrissey whether he'd shoot Smith or Mark E. Smith of The Fall, and Morrissey responded that he'd "line them up so that one bullet penetrated both simultaneously. . . . Robert Smith is a whingebag." Needless to say, Robert wasn't happy.
• The Teetotaler: Boris Williams. He was the only member in the early 90s wasn't drinking.
• Token Minority: To date, Andy Anderson has been the only official black member.
• True Companions: They may have had issues in the past, but Robert Smith and Simon Gallup have pretty much had each other's backs for over forty years at this point. Smith's even gone as far as to say that "it wouldn't be The Cure" without Simon.
• Unplugged Version: The Cure's Acoustic Hits is an album length version of this trope; it contained newly recorded acoustic versions of all 18 songs, on the North American version of Greatest Hits.
• Unusual Euphemism: Arguably in "Primary:"
  The very first time
  I touched your skin
  I thought of a story
  And rushed to reach the end too soon.
• Vocal Evolution: Compare Smith on Three Imaginary Boys and on everything released after it.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • "Killing An Arab" to Albert Camus' The Stranger
  • "How Beautiful You Are" to Charles Baudelaire's The Eyes of the Poor
  • "Charlotte Sometimes" to, well, Charlotte Sometimes

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