50 Best Cure-Songs Ever

Started by musikexpress, June 19, 2012, 17:18:23

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musikexpress

Hello guys, we're from Musikexpress, one of the biggest Music-Mags in Germany and we'd like to get you informed of our ranking. Our Cure-experts Sassan and Oliver tried to figure out the 50 best Cure-songs ever: http://www.musikexpress.de/magazin/galerien/article298730/die-50-besten-songs-von-the-cure.html

Do you agree?

Matti

Sorry for answering this rather tersely for the moment, but

Quote from: musikexpress on June 19, 2012, 17:18:23Do you agree?

Partly. A longer explanation will follow over the next few days.
and we close our eyes to sleep
to dream a boy and girl
who dream the world is nothing but a dream

dsanchez

Overall, not a bad selection but I would definitely not put "The Big Hand" in the #50 (???), neither I do agree with the #1.

However, I 100% agree with the selection of pictures! :)
2023.11.22 Lima
2023.11.27 Montevideo

Trust...

Thank you for the selection, I'm also not agree with the position that some songs have, but maybe it 's not a ranking from 1 to 50?

Great to see B-Sides on that list  :smth023
And really nice pictures.

Vanilla smile and a gorgeous strawberry kiss x

Matti

So, well, here it is...

First of all, I think that everyone would come up with their very own list of songs. I agree with a lot of yours, I disagree with a lot of your positions, and I think there are some major omissions. Anyway, I've taken the freedom to translate your descriptions and comment on some of them.



1. If Only Tonight We Could Sleep
What everyone is longing for: protection from an angel. Combined with the saddest guitar solo Smith has ever played. Higher forces must have spoken to him then. The song ends on a question mark. That way he continues with his music, up to now.

It ends unresolved, that's true. But "Don't let it end" is hardly a question.

2. All Cats Are Grey
A hand-played drum loop in a stereo ambience, a chord loop on a pale synth, even Smith's vocals are mixed right to the back. The song seems to float above time. Proto ambient pop.

3. A Night Like This
The unusual position of the midnight runner, desperately seeking his beloved. It ends without words, with a desperate sax solo, one of the best ever.

4. Plainsong
One of the most sublime album openers ever, doubtlessly. Dragging, orchestral, baroque, and hopelessly kitschy. So beautiful, it makes you cry when Smithy mublesings "...and then you smiled for a second".

Kitsch? Come on, that song was released way before that Marie Antoinette movie.

5. M
"Hello image, Sing me a line from your favourite song". Smith looking for his role, here he finds one. A perfect three minute pop song about betrayal.

6. Three Imaginary Boys
Dirge blueprint. Still jolting on post punk pathways, and the guitar solo sounds a little harsh. But the innocence of the novices sinking in their self-pity is touching.

7. The Figurehead
Pornography's centrepiece is perhaps Smith's most straightforward confession of early drug consumption. "I can never say no to anyone but you". The figurehead is shaking, and the cracks in the band are recognizable.

True, Pornography is a drug-influenced record. But don't mistake "influenced" for "about", unless you're talking about A Short Term Effect.

8. Lament
Even as a silly pop duo, they kept their gloom - on a b-side. Sounds like a homerecorded bauble, but as deep as the river the protagonist of the song drowned in.

9. The Caterpillar
What does the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly sound like? Smith flies away. As does the caterpillar girl who had caught herself in his hair. A moment lost that turned an idea into a four minute play.

10. Piggy in the Mirror
Smith's verdict on this: "Me hating myself again". But the oriental-sounding piece swings and twinkles. And the way Master Selfhate croons, you have to insinuate coquetry.

11. Like Cockatoos
A woman searching for meaning spots a shaman in the rain who denies her the holy orders. Cockatoos laugh at her. Hypnotic voodoo classic from the Kiss Me period and perfect for a sacrificial dance.

Intersting interpretation. A little over the top perhaps. Or very.

12. Dressing Up
A bubbling bass synth, funny flutes and a wonderfully mad-as-a-hatter vocal make this song one of the most extraordinary in the Cure catalogue.

13. Fascination Street
Smith has a love-hate relationship with the USA. An inebriated walk through a lit-up entertainment district that triggers all sorts of murder fantasies.

Really? Like, "kick the last nail in"? Murderistic indeed.

14. How Beautiful You Are
Pop song and tapeworm. For once, Smith has a story to tell. It's about empathy and ethos. Long term effect of this song: addictive.

15. The Blood

Probably triggered by a (drug) trip in southern France, the flamenco-inspired song shows how Smith handles sun, heat, and resentment. He lets himself burn to a cinder.

16. Jumping Someone Else's Train
The young Cure hade quite some dynamic songs. But with this, they got everything right: Drum breaks, the cutting-edge guitar, the insolent bass, and Smith's grumbly scorn.

17. A Forest
Even if you strip down the piece to individual tracks, you'd recognize it immediately. And there's a chorus without words - the horror remains unspeakable. "A Forest" is for the forest what "Jaws" is for the sea.

18. Faith
They were always particularly good with openers and get-out tracks. For a long time, "Faith" was the last song of every show. "stoic" doesn't really fit here, "disconsolate" does.

No it wasn't. They still choose it as the final song when a show has been considered particularly good.

19. At Night
A thriller in slow motion. The monotonous beat combined with the snarling, distorted bass drives you into a Poe madness. "Listen to the silence at night. Someone has to be there."

Check your sources please, and don't mistake Poe for Kafka.

20. Charlotte Sometimes
Released in between "Faith" and "Pornography", this leads directly into the twilight zone. This song is a cursed ghost. It circles and swirls, and Smith sings a canon with his on echo.

21. The 13th
Four years after the mega-selling "Wish" the band surprised listeners with a murder-ballad clad in a samba costume, including a brass section. A sign of unmatched courage and the last of the great Cure singles.

For once, the murder reference is in place.

22. Play For Today
Together with "A Forest", this perky and dry new wave pop song prevented people from freezing to their second album. Genuine only with the uncanny "tsh" drum sound.

23. Other Voices
At The Cure's early stages Smith was fascinated by ghosts. Chains jingle, the voice echoes like an undead's. Empty rooms, distant noises. The song co-founded their Goth reputation.

24. One Hundred Years
Rang in their Goth masterpiece with the line "It doesn't matter if we all die". The bellowing drum loop, the tormenting guitar, a tormented Smith - no hope = no mercy.

25. Sinking
Have we mentioned Simon Gallup's bass lines yet? This track lives, lives, lives on his notes.

26. Fire In Cairo
The young Cure knew exactly what to omit and where Wire got their riffs from. But thanks to Smith's melodies and his nagging they created standards as distinct as this.

27. Harold and Joe
An electronic beat, peaceful synths, Smith's mumbling: one of their mos extraordinary songs. Simong Gallup developed this while watching soap operas. Still, it's about escaping dull every-day life.

28. 10.15 Saturday Night
This song earned The Cure a recording deal. Written at 16, lonely and un-beery. Smith's "drip-drip-drip", together with the hi-hat, imitating the tap, is legendary.

29. From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea
An opus reigned by Smith's fondness with decorating loves lost with metaphors of cliffs, winds and the sea. Racing guitars, the piano hammers out a single note. Staggering. When will it fall?

30. Just Like Heaven
Of all the complete and perfect guitar pop songs of their mid phase, this is the most perfect. Melodic craftsmanship you just can't learn. Add the lyrics: what a love song this is!

31. Jupiter Crash
A male-female dialogue and an example why no one ever reaches into Smith's world. He sings about planet constellations, far away but essential for biochemistry on earth. But: "She just drifted away from me / Yeah, So much for gravity..."

32. Boys Don't Cry
Became a hit by its 1986 re-release. The catchy song with that penetrating lead guitar melody. No-one can get away with boys' songs as immediate and guileless as this nowadays, which is a pity.

33. Accuracy
One of the many killer songs from their debut. Simon Gallup's bassline sounds like the creeping death; Smith watches himself in the mirror and considers suicide. And how easy it would be.

"Simon Gallup's bassline" is actuall Michael Dempsey's, and what exactly does this song have to do with suicide?

34. The Kiss
Double album. Triple title. Shiny red lips on the cover. And this opener! Writhing wah-wah guitars. A defensive Smith: "I wish you were dead". Go back, lewdness! As if...

35. Push
The puzzling lyrics of this otherwise very straight rock song is one of the few in which Smith directly issues an invocation. Perhaps against familial child abuse. "Smear this man across the wall!"

Child abuse might be a top theme in the (German) media these days, but if you want to find a Cure song about it, try See the Children (and don't be shocked that it's not invocating anything).

36. Close To Me
One of the eighties' trickiest beats. And this nursery rhyme melody! A damn clever piece of pop. At least as exciting as cute. (Hint: prefer the album version without the trumpets!)

37. Throw Your Foot
Only Robert Smith can write a funny song about death by asphyxiation or hyperventilating. "You're tired and your face is grey, like the sad old fool you groove... Funny how your face gets bigger". Scary.

It's a funny song indeed, and weird too. But it's hardly scary. And it's most certainly not about death.

38. In Between Days
Opened doors for The Cure in the US. Another melody against which there's no cure. Especially with that semi acoustic dash. Did anyone notice at all how sad the lyrics are?

Probably. Did you notice it should read Inbetween?

39. This Twilight Garden
Why did the best songs from "Wish" became b-sides? The vow of eternal love becomes a trap here, in slow motion Smith cannot escape the "garden of dawn".

Trap? Like "I'm lost in you"? That goes out to the song's adressee, not to the garden itself.

40. Cold
If you had to choose one "Pornography" song, then probably because it's even gloomier than the rest of them. As is "Cold". Dawn of the synthesizers. "Your name – like ice into my heart".

41. One More Time
A guitar sounding like gold, only to play Icarus and touch the sky for four minutes. Or to touch a woman. Condensed desire, and perhaps the best instrumental ever to include vocals.

42. Sugar Girl

The "Kiss me" b-sides exemplify how The Cure knot together all their little melodies. This chamber pop treasure turned out particularly touching.

43. Closedown
"Disintegration" often hints at death by drowing. Here, Simoon Gallop's bass and Smith's voice are mixed to a sound so watery and relentlessly patient as if nothing could ever save the singer.

Apart from that nine-minute epic that is The Same Deep Water as You, the album never hints at drowning I believe.

44. Six Different Ways
Masterly composed an arranged, this song would be unthinkable without the eccentric experiments on "The Top". Very playful, very charming and undeniably pop.

45. Catch
Smith doesn't use the word "sex", which opens up poetic worlds to him. "And sometimes we would spend the night / Just rolling about on a floor." Foreplay or play? For Smith, love is a game.

Well, he does, but not here.

46. Treasure
A mediocre album like "Wild Mood Swings" can only be approached with a fair amount of cherry-picking. And this is one of those bittersweet ballad-cherries with a sighing melody, knocked out by Smith

47. Want
The instrument follows instrument structure, reigned by a metronome, may seem chivvy. The song is all the more huge when it's at the full monty. "I want the sky to fall down / I want blood instead of rain". Gods of Thunder.

48. High
Perhaps the strongest grower of all Cure singles, an ode to the abeyance created by being in love. And to the fear it could be over soon.

Where's that fear again?

49. Out Of This World
They wanted to create a monument like "Pornography" and "Disintegration" with "Bloodflowers". The elegic approach was right, but hardly any other piece became a song like this one.

50. The Big Hand
Originally an instrumental for Smiths project "The Sea" that was sadly removed from "Wish" on last minute. One of his few junkie retrospectives that promises "fireworks and heaven" to those who successfully dry out.

Indeed, it's a drug-inspired song. But the "fireworks and heaven" describe the drug's very effect and the song doesn't contain any hint of a release.



So what have we learned? The Cure can write great pop songs, although Robert Smith's lyrics are mostly about fear, death, murder and love soon to be over. But hey, they're a drug-taking Goth band, remember?
and we close our eyes to sleep
to dream a boy and girl
who dream the world is nothing but a dream

Ulrich

Quote from: dsanchez on June 19, 2012, 20:36:00
However, I 100% agree with the selection of pictures! :)

Yeah, really good photos, some rare views (at least I'd never seen them before).
Of course everyone would see the top 50 in a different way, with different songs in different places. That's life, tastes aren't the same etc. But much better than no such list at all.  :)
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

musikexpress

Thanks for all your answers, especially Matti :)