Darkness in Cure songs

[revolt]

I think one of the most distintive characteristics of dark Cure music is that it is rarely completely negative. There's usually an openness or ambiguity in tone that prevents it from conveying a feeling of utter despair. This openness of interpretation comes from the fact that there is usually a direct or indirect sense of hope in the lyrics, or perhaps just a touch of a fighting spirit that refuses to accept or go down.

You can find good examples of what I'm talking about in epic dark album closers.
"Faith" ends with the lines "there's nothing left but faith". "Pornography" concludes with "I must fight this sickness, find a cure". And "The Top" shouts "Please come back, all of you" (instead of "you'll never come back" or something more defeatist). And, of course, KMKMKM ends with "Fight", which, even if not among the Cure's best closers, conveys exactly the fighting attitude that I'm talking about.

Maybe this comes from the fact that Robert Smith loves life too much (his exact words in some interview, by the way). He can never dive completely in the well of despair, unlike Ian Curtis, for example.

What do you think?

[japanesebaby]

i think there's a great sense of, a possibility of different interpretation in so many cure lyrics that it's hard to say if something was "meant to be" hopeful or hopeless. for instance, i personally feel that the ending lines of 'faith' are the really very hopeless: "with nothing left but faith" - i think that can mean something worse than nothing as faith can turn out to be a completely empty and hollow thing. it's a sign of a person who's not only been ripped off everything but more than everything.
i do understand it can very well be seen the opposite way, as keeping alive a ray of hope. but still i find those very bleak lyrics, ending up in something that's almost something worse than death.
that's just my impression, my interpretation. i'm sure not many people agree with my point of view and i'm not asking anyone to agree/see it the same way. but i'm very convinced of that that's what it means to me, that's how it speaks to me.


i think the main characteristic of (all) the cure lyrics is their ability to avoid being "frozen" under one and only interpretation.
that's why they are mostly great literature, just as they are, even without music. 

[revolt]

i think there's a great sense of, a possibility of different interpretation in so many cure lyrics that it's hard to say if something was "meant to be" hopeful or hopeless. for instance, i personally feel that the ending lines of 'faith' are the really very hopeless: "with nothing left but faith" - i think that can mean something worse than nothing as faith can turn out to be a completely empty and hollow thing. it's a sign of a person who's not only been ripped off everything but more than everything.
i do understand it can very well be seen the opposite way, as keeping alive a ray of hope. but still i find those very bleak lyrics, ending up in something that's almost something worse than death.
that's just my impression, my interpretation. i'm sure not many people agree with my point of view and i'm not asking anyone to agree/see it the same way. but i'm very convinced of that that's what it means to me, that's how it speaks to me.
 

Well, Robert has often said about "Faith", and he has even sang it live, that there is really nothing left, NOT EVEN faith. He probably had no real faith when he wrote those lyrics, maybe he just wrote them with a wishful-thinking attitude. Maybe he just thought that to be truly faithful to himself he had to leave there some possible mark of hope, since he knew that however down he felt he would never be the kind of person who commits suicide or anything like that (although, on a slighty less serious note, we could say that on those chemical vacation days of 1983-84 he surely seemed to try his best to leave this planet... ).

Anyway, I certainly would never look for comfort in the lyrics or music of "Faith", I'm much more a "Pornography" kind of guy (now, please, don't read this last sentence aloud...  ).

i think the main characteristic of (all) the cure lyrics is their ability to avoid being "frozen" under one and only interpretation.
that's why they are mostly great literature, just as they are, even without music. 

Well, I think that "great literature" comment might be going a little too far... maybe a few of them might qualify, but in general, I don't think so. They're good lyrics but not necessarily good poetry, in my opinion. I think bands like And Also The Trees or a solo singer like David Sylvian would qualify better as lyricists whose words read like good poetry even whem the music is absent.

[japanesebaby]

i think the main characteristic of (all) the cure lyrics is their ability to avoid being "frozen" under one and only interpretation.
that's why they are mostly great literature, just as they are, even without music. 

Well, I think that "great literature" comment might be going a little too far... maybe a few of them might qualify, but in general, I don't think so. They're good lyrics but not necessarily good poetry, in my opinion. I think bands like And Also The Trees or a solo singer like David Sylvian would qualify better as lyricists whose words read like good poetry even whem the music is absent.

i admit i'm not familiar enough with sylvain's lyris to state any opinion at all. but i actually do think the cure do beat AATT on level of poetry. that doesn't mean i don't appreciate AATT but i think their lyrics are much more (how to call it...) "conventional lyrical/poetic song lyrics". like they were a bit too aware of themselves with it. that's also why their lyrics perhaps might seem to be better poetry at first. but in the end the cure beats them by not being that conventional, by being great underdogs - it takes a while to realize it but that's where the strength there lies. it's not conventional or too obvious.

[revolt]

i think the main characteristic of (all) the cure lyrics is their ability to avoid being "frozen" under one and only interpretation.
that's why they are mostly great literature, just as they are, even without music. 

Well, I think that "great literature" comment might be going a little too far... maybe a few of them might qualify, but in general, I don't think so. They're good lyrics but not necessarily good poetry, in my opinion. I think bands like And Also The Trees or a solo singer like David Sylvian would qualify better as lyricists whose words read like good poetry even whem the music is absent.

i admit i'm not familiar enough with sylvain's lyris to state any opinion at all. but i actually do think the cure do beat AATT on level of poetry. that doesn't mean i don't appreciate AATT but i think their lyrics are much more (how to call it...) "conventional lyrical/poetic song lyrics". like they were a bit too aware of themselves with it. that's also why their lyrics perhaps might seem to be better poetry at first. but in the end the cure beats them by not being that conventional, by being great underdogs - it takes a while to realize it but that's where the strength there lies. it's not conventional or too obvious.

Well, here's "Before the Bullfight", from David Sylvian's "Gone to Earth" album. Tell me what you think about it...

I hear your voice way down inside
A whispering sea of towering trees
But no reply

A silence so rare and more than I can stand
Sweeps like a flood
Through life's flesh and blood
And steals away with its heart

If I'm losing you
Then there's nothing more than I can say
The fighting is on and battles are won
Or thrown away

But if I could live safe and sound
In God given fields or mountains of steel
Then here I'd stay 'til you're gone

Guilty of stealing every thought I own
I will take my turn to fight the bullfight
Every word's sunk in deep
Like the blades of a knife through my heart
But my strenght will return to fight the bullfight

As time's come to show
I'm told nothing more than I should know
A ship on the sea that threatens to leave
But never goes

This island of blue
Where life clings to your hands
Like water and sand will lose its way
When you're gone

When all's forgiven still every fault's my own
I will take my turn to fight the bullfight
Say a prayer for my release
When every hope in the world is asleep
And my strenght will return to fight the bullfight

[japanesebaby]

well it's ok and needless to say it beats most lyrics out there. but if observed independently as a piece of literature it's indeed quite conventional (with quite conventional rhyming and so on).
i DO think that something like this is indeed better poetry. much more emotionally striking in its unconventionality:

so i'll wait for you
where i always wait
behind the signs that sell the news
i'll watch for you like yesterday
and hope for you
one day that once
spent out on me
and up 'til late
i search for you
your hat pushed straight
away from me
your measured step
heads up you win
always too late...

oh if i could just once catch your eye
invisible against the words
that hold you down in solitude
and never let you go
the way that every time
my eyes just close
like lids of wooden men in file
i put you under rainy day
your hat's all off
and i'm gone away...


all i need to do is to read the two sets of lyrics out loud (or just silently to myself) and the answer is very clear to me, which one has more poetical power.
or, just try 'how beautiful you are' which is a truly wonderful re-working of the baudelaire's original text. that's a pretty difficult genre, to successfully re-work the works of such old masters.
(i think this is an area where i can indeed prove you wrong  )

(but now we're starting to veer off...)

[revolt]

well it's ok and needless to say it beats most lyrics out there. but if observed independently as a piece of literature it's indeed quite conventional (with quite conventional rhyming and so on).
i DO think that something like this is indeed better poetry. much more emotionally striking in its unconventionality:

so i'll wait for you
where i always wait
behind the signs that sell the news
i'll watch for you like yesterday
and hope for you
one day that once
spent out on me
and up 'til late
i search for you
your hat pushed straight
away from me
your measured step
heads up you win
always too late...

oh if i could just once catch your eye
invisible against the words
that hold you down in solitude
and never let you go
the way that every time
my eyes just close
like lids of wooden men in file
i put you under rainy day
your hat's all off
and i'm gone away...


all i need to do is to read the two sets of lyrics out loud (or just silently to myself) and the answer is very clear to me, which one has more poetical power.

Well, those Cure lyrics also have some rhymes... The hat detail is the trick that does it for me. Those are good lyrics indeed, but now I'm actually starting to think that you are indeed a sentimental person, just not the typical kind.  Anyway, still I don't think they have more poetical power than Sylvian's. But then, DS is probably among my top 5 lyricists ever, whereas Robert possibly only comes in... number 13? 

or, just try 'how beautiful you are' which is a truly wonderful re-working of the baudelaire's original text. that's a pretty difficult genre, to successfully re-work the works of such old masters.

Now, now, here I am going to vehemently disagree! I have always thought that thosr lyrics are rather pedestrian... I really like the tune, but the words...


The childs eyes uttered nothing
But a mute and utter joy
And filled my heart with shame for us
At the way we are

Lame!

Until you spoke
And showed me understanding is a dream
"I hate these people staring
Make them go away from me!"

Lame!


And this is why I hate you
And how I understand
That no-one ever knows or loves another

Lame! Lame! Completely lame!


The girl hates those people staring at her, which is only understandable. No one likes having people staring at them, specially if they're total strangers. And from this Robert concludes that love and understanding are a dream!? I still find it hard to belive that he wrote such a piece of crap... Sorry, don't mean to offend you or him, but these lyrics are unbearable.

[japanesebaby]

Well, those Cure lyrics also have some rhymes...

yes, but rather unconventional ones. not like "As time's come to show, I'm told nothing more than I should know".

but now I'm actually starting to think that you are indeed a sentimental person, just not the typical kind. 

no, i just like writers who are capable of making the language their own. 

But then, DS is probably among my top 5 lyricists ever, whereas Robert possibly only comes in... number 13? 

if one wishes to think good lyrics/poetry is something that need to be written according to some sort of pre-existing "scheme", then sylvain might seem better. but like said, i am not overly impressed by that alone. you can learn to write like that by reading other people's works and adapting to it, learning "how to write poetic lyrics". i don't mean to sound overly arrogant but the truth is that it's not even overly difficult, to learn that. all it takes is a sharp eye/ear and a lots of practice. but to take a completely different perspective/path and not be content with producing something that's purely conventional, that's always more powerful - IF it works. there's the gamble. there are very few occasions where robert's lyrics fail in such a way - there are some, yes, but really not many (and i'll leave some pop stuff out from the start as it makes little sense to put it on the same starting line anyway).
i look for writers that don't need to put themselves within any such conventional scheme. i'm not impressed by sentimentality for sentimentality's sake. and i'm utterly bored by writers (especially poets!) who don't have that healthy courage to try to step outside the tradition, in order to find themselves, to find the anguage that is truly your own - that is the key. *)
and no offense but i don't see any of that courage in sylvain's lyrics here. sure, he's gifted in putting words together, gifted, yes. but like said, that alone is nothing overly exceptional.

*) that's also why the greatest writers are often pushed to the margin and not understood: because people have a pre-existing idea what they want when they read the word "poetry". and also because it might take just as much effort from the reader, to get inside the writer's language/mindscape than it took from the writer to find his/her own way of speaking the words. just as long as the writer chooses the safe way and writes in a way that's easily acceptable for the readers he surely guarantees his (commercial) success. he will have lots of admirers because he writes in a way that more or less easily translates to the majority of readers.
but that doesn't mean he's a great artist. gifted, yes (like sylvain), but not exceptional.

The childs eyes uttered nothing
But a mute and utter joy
And filled my heart with shame for us
At the way we are

Lame!

no, i don't think so. unless one does have that pre-existing idea what poetry should be like, what one should be delivered.
i think sylvain's "And my strenght will return to fight the bullfight" is a lot more lame and empty. very conventional and therefore bereft of real true and individual emotion...


(anyway, this IS alarmingly becoming a david sylvain vs. robert smith topic... and has very little to do with "darkness in cure lyrics")

[revolt]

(anyway, this IS alarmingly becoming a david sylvain vs. robert smith topic... and has very little to do with "darkness in cure lyrics")

Well, veering out of topic is not unusual here... and specially not unusual when we are involved. 

if one wishes to think good lyrics/poetry is something that need to be written according to some sort of pre-existing "scheme", then sylvain might seem better. but like said, i am not overly impressed by that alone. you can learn to write like that by reading other people's works and adapting to it, learning "how to write poetic lyrics". i don't mean to sound overly arrogant but the truth is that it's not even overly difficult, to learn that. all it takes is a sharp eye/ear and a lots of practice. but to take a completely different perspective/path and not be content with producing something that's purely conventional, that's always more powerful - IF it works. there's the gamble. there are very few occasions where robert's lyrics fail in such a way - there are some, yes, but really not many (and i'll leave some pop stuff out from the start as it makes little sense to put it on the same starting line anyway).
i look for writers that don't need to put themselves within any such conventional scheme. i'm not impressed by sentimentality for sentimentality's sake. and i'm utterly bored by writers (especially poets!) who don't have that healthy courage to try to step outside the tradition, in order to find themselves, to find the anguage that is truly your own - that is the key. *)
and no offense but i don't see any of that courage in sylvain's lyrics here. sure, he's gifted in putting words together, gifted, yes. but like said, that alone is nothing overly exceptional.

*) that's also why the greatest writers are often pushed to the margin and not understood: because people have a pre-existing idea what they want when they read the word "poetry". and also because it might take just as much effort from the reader, to get inside the writer's language/mindscape than it took from the writer to find his/her own way of speaking the words. just as long as the writer chooses the safe way and writes in a way that's easily acceptable for the readers he surely guarantees his (commercial) success. he will have lots of admirers because he writes in a way that more or less easily translates to the majority of readers.
but that doesn't mean he's a great artist. gifted, yes (like sylvain), but not exceptional.

Well, maybe that more "conventional" way of writing lyrics is Sylvian's true voice. I don't think it is a matter of courage here, but of finding a style you're confortable with and that allows you to express your feelings and thoughts.

I don't have any pre-established scheme according to which lyrics or poetry should be written. I like e.e. cummings as much as I like, say, Shakespeare, or Charles Bukowski, and I also like Robert Smith as much or almost as much as Tom Waits or Bono or David Sylvian (that "coming at nr. 13" thing was only a silly joke, actually RS belongs to my top 10 list of lyricists, if such a thing matters at all).

Also, RS has many more admirers than DS has... For whatever unconventionality his lyrics might have sometimes, they seem to be perfectly digestable by a great number of people all over the world.

The childs eyes uttered nothing
But a mute and utter joy
And filled my heart with shame for us
At the way we are

Lame!

no, i don't think so. unless one does have that pre-existing idea what poetry should be like, what one should be delivered.
i think sylvain's "And my strenght will return to fight the bullfight" is a lot more lame and empty. very conventional and therefore bereft of real true and individual emotion...

Come on, "filled my heart with shame for us at the way we are" is an expression as conventional and corny as it gets. At least the bullfight thing is a little less used as a metaphor... Anyway, who's to say that Sylvian's lyrics here are bereft of "real true and individual emotion"? How can you know that? I think here indeed you are being a little arrogant, no offense. By the way, I have never said that those Robert's lyrics heve no emotion in them, I just find that the way he uses to express himself there is far from the best.

[japanesebaby]

Come on, "filled my heart with shame for us at the way we are" is an expression as conventional and corny as it gets. At least the bullfight thing is a little less used as a metaphor...

well, perhaps it can sound conventional when you take it out of its original context(!). but at least to me the context is quite important, the placing of the line in the structure of the text.
(and i'm sorry but to me, such a bullfight metaphor is indeed quite corny to me, even when it's kept within its original context. i can't help it, bullfight is corny. to me. and when i said "conventional" i didn't mean "little used". little used can be just as conventional as something very common. anyway, let's leave that.)

Anyway, who's to say that Sylvian's lyrics here are bereft of "real true and individual emotion"? How can you know that?

well, i could just as well ask who's to say that 'how beautiful you are' is "lame lame" and "completely lame" either? : i could have just as well asked "how can you say that?" - but i didn't. i don't doubt your convictions, i was merely describing my own, not pushing it to anyone, just describing it. if you think it's a wrong opinion, that's fine. but i'm not going to change my mind just because you'd want me to. my opinion is not some random one but based on something that i feel is true - to me. 
and if i don't doubt yours, then why should i doubt my own or "admit" that it is "wrong"?  :


i think we should much better focus on the subject matter at hand, not on the fact that we have different opinions about something. that's the distortion that i see here and therefore this conversation seems to be quite stillborn, bound to be getting nowhere at all.

(anyway, this IS alarmingly becoming a david sylvain vs. robert smith topic... and has very little to do with "darkness in cure lyrics")

Well, veering out of topic is not unusual here... and specially not unusual when we are involved. 

it was a moderator's point of view: that it's either time to split this thread, or to go right back on-topic.
veering off's not unusual but would often better be avoided, as we do try to keep the public forum in good working order, things easy to find, all for the mutual benefit of all our other readers.
so, any further comments about this smith vs. sylvain, let's either have another thread or take it over to pms or something, ok?

just let's take this back to the beginning: "darkness in cure songs".
(please everyone read the first post at the start of the thread).

[revolt]

Come on, "filled my heart with shame for us at the way we are" is an expression as conventional and corny as it gets. At least the bullfight thing is a little less used as a metaphor...

well, perhaps it can sound conventional when you take it out of its original context(!). but at least to me the context is quite important, the placing of the line in the structure of the text.

The context is important, I agree. The thing is, the specific context that verse is placed at only makes it "sound" worse, in my opinion. It just doesn't seem psychologically believable, that anyone could get that sort of feeling only from the situation described. Unless the narrator had been more or else uncousciouly already hating the girl and was only really waiting for the faintest "reason" to let his hate come forward...

Anyway, who's to say that Sylvian's lyrics here are bereft of "real true and individual emotion"? How can you know that?

well, i could just as well ask who's to say that 'how beautiful you are' is "lame lame" and "completely lame" either? : i could have just as well asked "how can you say that?" - but i didn't. i don't doubt your convictions, i was merely describing my own, not pushing it to anyone, just describing it. if you think it's a wrong opinion, that's fine. but i'm not going to change my mind just because you'd want me to. my opinion is not some random one but based on something that i feel is true - to me. 
and if i don't doubt yours, then why should i doubt my own or "admit" that it is "wrong"?  :

It's not a question of "right" or "wrong". It's just that your favourable opinion on the lyrics of "How beautiful you are" kind of shocked me and I was trying to understand the reasons for that opinion of yours. Which I still can't. Sorry if I've been perhaps too harsh.

(anyway, this IS alarmingly becoming a david sylvain vs. robert smith topic... and has very little to do with "darkness in cure lyrics")

Well, veering out of topic is not unusual here... and specially not unusual when we are involved. 

it was a moderator's point of view: that it's either time to split this thread, or to go right back on-topic.
veering off's not unusual but would often better be avoided, as we do try to keep the public forum in good working order, things easy to find, all for the mutual benefit of all our other readers.
so, any further comments about this smith vs. sylvain, let's either have another thread or take it over to pms or something, ok?

just let's take this back to the beginning: "darkness in cure songs".
(please everyone read the first post at the start of the thread).

OK, no problem with that. I can understand the point of view of a moderator. It's just that since it was I who created this thread and since the only two people that seem to be interested in it is you and me, I thought we would not have to worry much about it veering a little off topic...

[japanesebaby]

this is a bit late but i recently ran into something that mr. sylvian is not necessarily among the tops poets of the world and that his words do not read like good poetry even when the music is absent....

here's a review from melody maker (october 31, 1987) that captures it "nicely" (the highlights are mine):


DAVID SYLVIAN
Secrets Of The Beehive (Virgin)

Ponderously uninspired, I ring up Roberts, my spiritual adviser in times of mental meltdown. "It's silvery streams really", he reasons. "It's outside the realms of pop music. Allegory." That's all well and good but it's also precious, pompous, pale, passive, almost perfunctory, pious, plain, pointless, powerless, prosaic, awkwardly proficient and as compelling as a pillar-box.

I remember getting dizzy to my first whiff of John Keats too but I kept it private. In the wrong hands, all this heady melancholia and anxious inwardness can seem terribly underripe. Scott Walker had the vestal voice and the salacious eyes. Nick Drake's drowsy sorrow rarely trapped itself in its own obsessive anguish. The much misconstrued Leonard Cohen had sardonic wit and profanity galore in his arsenal of emotional cinders. David Sylvian is a would-be aesthete with a voice as thick and putrid as cheap hair lacquer. A world-weary cynic posing as a romantic fool masquerading as a panited visionary. Splashing about in the little grey pool of life, Sylvian has only a damp sulk to offer us. "I wrestle with an outlook on life that shifts between darkness and shadowy light," he grumbles on the horribly grim "Orpheus". Poor old bugger, eh? Get a proper job then you dismal, wet saphead.
Sylvian looks meaningfully in the cracked tea-cup, raises his fists to the cracked ceiling and yodels, "ignore me, ignore me", before going back to contemplate some some wan lily overwrench with rain or the wild moon in the wintry sky. Or something.

"But it's poetry!" a colleague (Roberts) interjects. No, it's not poetry, not in the hands of someone as turgid and inflated as David "Blooming" Sylvian. It's not poetry in the slightest. It's vapid, adolescent misery. It's a little man on a wedding-cake making a big fuss about the unimportant corners of his precious little life. It's a wretched record that starts at the bottom and stays there. It will sell astonishingly small amounts and will be overestimated at that. It is Midge Ure with chillblains on his tongue. It is a autumnal landscape of soggy metaphysical longings. Its finest feature is a sleeve by those nice people at 23 Envelope.

It is a record that suggests that David Sylvian has used up his coupon, completely. It's a lot of hooey. It is not at all improbable. It is as stupid and ungainly as a chicken in a duffel-coat. David Sylvian is NOT Louise Brooks, no mater how loud my colleague talks. David Sylvian is the sound of radiators clinking., Gilbert O'Sullivan's clever brother, a gloomy mortician who wouldn't know beauty from a fireman's hose. Listen to the schschlop of empty thought and yawn like a cliff-top. Having no talent is no longer enough. People make records like THIS. It's a barmy world. Be deaf, be daft, be happy.


- John Wilde (Melody Maker, October 31, 1987)




it's that some people simply pretend to be/like to imagine themselves as poets (before "before going back to contemplate some some wan lily overwrench with rain or the wild moon in the wintry sky. Or something."? ha!)
that's not poetry. and those bullfight verses (earlier in this thread) are just a perfect example of that sort of utter daftness.


so let's forget mr david "blooming" sylvian and go back on topic, talking about a bit more genuine poets...