AV Club's Hear This: The Cure - Open

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The Cure even finds reasons to mope on the dance floor

“I really don’t know what I’m doing here / I really think I should’ve gone to bed tonight,” Robert Smith says, kicking off a description of another night spent pointlessly flirting and getting wasted to the point of collapse, and not even having any fun. Not really. As Smith finds himself amid the revelry—where he’s crushed by the hands of strangers pressing in that “won’t go away,” eventually becoming so inebriated that he’s laughing “like an animal in pain,” yet still “just looking at the floor”—he’s always aware that his outward, manic joy is just a chemically supplied mask for his inner sadness.

“I can’t seem to think / Where this is / Who I am / Why I’m keeping this going,” he yelps over seasick guitars, at the song’s midpoint moment of clarity, before yowling arguably the mopiest lyric the Bard of Mope ever moped: “And the way the rain comes down hard / That’s the way I feel inside.” I don’t go to many ’80s dance nights anymore, and I’ve since (mostly) outgrown romanticizing inner torment. But even today when I hear “Open,” that’s the way I feel inside too.