He could also write gorgeous pop songs, before and after, and “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me!” was one of the few glamorous, serious records of the ’80s. “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep”, “How Beautiful You Are” were something like a philosophy course for high school students and practical life support.
The Cure have always been about why love exists and why we must die, and neither can young people understand, but neither can old people. That fear was just there, and you could read Zillo or Schopenhauer, you could dress in black and join the drama group or talk about Sartre in philosophy class: There was no escape, and ahead lay a dark, cheerless, long, long time we called study, after the dark, joyless, long, long time was over.
The melancholy of The Cure
I was in love with “Kiss Me!”, I was unhappily in love with “Disintegration”. It wasn’t Robert Smith’s fault, but both records knew about me. With Smith there was no longer happiness, but something else that usually helps pubescents and that brings some to their graves: melancholy. Robert’s namesakes, the blissful Smiths, had just retired when Disintegration came along.
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No matter how loud you turned up the hi-fi system, the record always sounded like it was under a shroud, and the cover said: “This music has been mixed to be played loud – so turn it up.” But even Dad’s wooden cased device didn’t give enough to numb the pain. At the time, the reviewers were overwhelmed by a record that, according to the prevailing dialectic, had to be tomb music.
For us, “Disintegration” was a symphony. “‘I think I’m old and I’m feeling pain’ you said ,and it’s all running out like it’s the end of the world’ you said ,and it’s so cold like the cold when you’re dead’ you said and then you smiled for a second.” It was written one after the other and it was also sung like that. “It’s just the way I smile”, it says at the end, and when I hear that today, I know why I consider song lyrics to be pure poetry.
kitsch and redundancy
Of course there was also the kitsch. “Whenever I’m alone with you, you make me feel like I am home again,” Smith sang on the song, which is simply called “Lovesong.” A real litany. She was everything to him, as they say. Funny to hear that from an older man. Smith was already over 30.
Musically, “Disintegration” is a single redundancy, an endless loop, a spinning top of unhappy consciousness. There are these impossibly slow, soaring elegies like “Pictures Of You” and these propelling, refrainless tirades like “Disintegration”: “How the end always is…”
At the end an organ sounds like an accordion, the drums pound indifferently, the guitar plays sweetly above it, then this voice: “And now the time has gone/ The monster climb deeper inside of me.” The piece is called “Untitled”. And at some point school was over forever.
As long as you listen to this music, you don’t have to be afraid. The questions of life disappear, writes Ludwig Wittgenstein, and this is the answer.