10 Best Songs. NO Singles: The Cure
The second entry in the “10 Best Songs. NO Singles” series goes to The Cure! We just saw them live this month at Pine Knob in Clarkston, MI and they were amazing. 2 1/2 hours and an awesome setlist. Robert Smith and crew have released plenty of singles as well as plenty of albums, collections, and b-sides with a lot to choose from for this list of 10 best with no singles included. As it turns out I settled on tracks that all did indeed appear on Cure studio albums - not necessarily by design, it just worked out that way. It wasn’t easy. I’ve been a fan for almost 40 years…
I was thinking about possibly writing three straight posts about The Cure - this one, an album ranking (still in the works) and maybe a concert review of the show I just saw but I’m not sure about that one. In any event let me know if I’ve “missed” on any of these but remember this IS a snobbery…. you’ll likely be wrong. Hehe…
10 Best Songs. NO Singles: The Cure
At Night (Seventeen Seconds, 1980) Seventeen Seconds represented a big leap forward artistically from the debut Three Imaginary Boys album and along with A Forest, At Night started to head down the dark path that would result in the nadir of darkness two albums later with the goth classic Pornography. The repeating riff is heavy but not loud or noisy and the track is hypnotic and ominous. Robert Smith’s vocals are buried in the mix but they work - the verses almost work as a bridge just to get back to that riff. I was pleasantly surprised that they played this at the show we just saw. One of the highlights for me for sure.
All Cats Are Grey (Faith, 1981) A contender for my all time favorite Cure song - not kidding. Simon Gallup's bass lines have been so central to The Cure's sound and this song is part of the evidence. On this song he brings sort of a watery percussive sound to it that is just dreamy. The vocals are double tracked and low in the mix again - often indecipherable and it works again to great effect, and the way the last musical note is held each time when the main hook ends is just so powerful somehow. I can't totally describe it, and when you combine it with the hypnotic and somewhat tribal drumming it just hits in a way not many songs can.
Other Voices (Faith, 1981) Another bass dominated masterpiece from Faith which could be my favorite Cure album. Robert Smith's vocals take more of a leading role here as he makes it clear that you're always......wrong. They did make a video for this song and it was included on the Staring At The Sea cassette version of the singles release Standing On A Beach but it was NOT actually released as a single so it's still eligible for this list.
Cold (Pornography, 1982) Maybe the most ominous and dark dirge from one of the bleakest albums in recorded history - the celebrated goth masterpiece Pornography. It’s just such an accomplishment to come up with something that sounds like this - artists pushing the boundaries. That wall of synth sound - it’s just a miserable song about drugs and the grip of addiction (I think?) and believe me I actually find this album a bit difficult to get through. Like do I really want to go to that place for 42 1/2 minutes? None of the whimsy or happy songs they would record like Just Like Heaven or Friday I'm In Love just 6 & 10 years later respectively. Not that I need those, but this is the other extreme - pure darkness. They also played this at the show we were just at which was very cool.
The Top (The Top, 1984) The epic closing title track from the glorious and transitional mess that is The Top LP. Another hypnotically dark track and an earlier epic at over 7 minutes. "This top is a place where nobody goes - you just imagine. You just imagine it all…” A place that makes you “feel so sick and scared” and Robert Smith conveys this really well. You feel like you're just on the edge of it as the track crawls along with Andy Anderson’s fantastic drumming - his only album with the band after Lol Tolhurst moved from drums to keyboards with Smith pleading to "Please come back…” If this song were 14 minutes I’d be just fine with it.
Push (The Head On The Door, 1985) I said before that Faith could be my favorite Cure album, but The Head On The Door might be their best (there will be more time to discuss this when I do my album ranking). And while Close To Me and In Between Days might be their best two singles of all time, Push may have been a huge hit on its own had it been on any other album as a lead single. No lyrics for over two minutes for an uptempo tune like this is really cool - especially live. To bust out this upbeat sounding track as the 11th song in the setlist after the 4 straight desperate tracks in a row of Cold, Burn, At Night and Charlotte Sometimes was quite refreshing - allowing us to enjoy the vibe with the extended intro at that point was perfection. Felt like a celebration.
One More Time (Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, 1987) Another song with no lyrics for at least two minutes, and to be clear many Cure songs are like this. This one is just so gorgeous and sad. You just get the sense that Robert Smith is baring his soul here with such an achingly forlorn but powerful vocal. Wanting to touch the sky just one more time before…... Innocence lost perhaps. A goodbye song maybe. Not sure but this song just makes you feel.
The Same Deep Water As You (Disintegration, 1989) Disintegration is another dark masterpiece of an album and The Same Deep Water As You is another classic Cure track in that epic mold that unfolds slowly and surely but with plenty of room to breathe and hypnotize. There are actually some great Robert Smith quotes discussing this album along with this song’s lyrics at this link. A song that Smith is particularly proud of and as is mentioned in that link was actually voted as the 7th best all time Cure song in a Rolling Stone reader’s poll (not that my list would look like that one but you get the point).
Untitled (Disintegration, 1989) Maybe I should rank the closing tracks on all the Cure albums. In fact 5 closing tracks on Cure albums are title tracks - not sure there’s another band that does this. While Untitled isn’t a title track (it’s an UN-title track - see what I did there) it’s an incredible closer - it’s not exactly a “happy” song, but it feels like a coming out into the light after an hour of mostly darkness and in that way somehow gives Disintegration a bit of closure emotionally even though there is plenty of regret built into the lyrics. A bit contradictory perhaps but perfectly so and it’s one of my favorite Cure songs.
Watching Me Fall (Bloodflowers, 2000) At 11:14 this is the longest Cure song (with the exception of the soundtrack instrumental Carnage Visors which only kinda counts). To me this represents the band making no concessions - to anything. Not to commercialism, not to getting old, not to predictability. It doesn’t feel like they set out to make an 11 minute song - it just is one. And it’s actually really heavy in its own way. The Cure never goes metal or anything, but this one just feels musically heavy - not a fast tempo but it kicks ass. Interestingly enough I just went back to genius.com for kicks to see if there is any commentary on this one and sure enough Robert Smith is quoted there (as told to Rolling Stone) as saying he tried to edit this song down to 6 minutes but it just wasn’t the same. Yes - this is a mammoth and every note of its 11:14 running time is necessary.
So there you go - the 10 best Cure songs that weren’t singles! Comment below and feel free to share!
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