Robert Smith’s songs are suitable for clichéd gothic tests of courage. Nightly walks through the cemetery, drinking red wine in front of candles that are placed on the necks of bottles covered in dripping wax and whose flames you quickly draw your finger through. Danger and pain of pleasure.
The 65-year-old’s Eerie-Pop songs were and are not inspired by horror films
But the 65-year-old’s Eerie-Pop songs were and are not inspired by horror films. But from classical literature.
Albert Camus’ novel “The Stranger” (in “Killing An Arab”) and Mary Howitt’s poem “The Spider and the Fly” (in “Lullaby”), for example, are about life and – even more – death.
Lyrics of decadence
On the current one Cure-Album “Songs Of A Lost World”, the first after a 16-year wait, reminds Smith of the poet Ernest Dowson, who lived from 1867 to 1900 and with his end-of-the-world poem “Dregs” was the template for the first single, “Alone,” supplied. You don’t have to know Dowson yet. What is crucial is the encouragement to venture into dark library corridors. And to free the old volumes of decadent poetry from their cobwebs.
In the new song “I Can Never Say Goodbye,” in which Smith deals with his brother’s death and describes it as the violent act of a demon, he quotes from Ray Bradbury’s novel “Something Wicked This Way Comes” (the title itself a “Macbeth” -Quote), which Cure fans will probably also study.
Also works: crooner swing by Bart Howard
But, with all the gravitas. Robert Smith can also be very elated when it comes to love. He once wrote “Lovesong” for his wife, Mary Poole. And quotes Bart Howard’s crooner swing: “Fly Me To The Moon”.