28 years of News, rumors, minutiae about The Cure
Missed any of Robert Smith's recent interviews or want to watch/listen again?
Tim's Listening Party
https://youtu.be/J-gWGkfapbk?si=dVxDAUeRGgkSY4V7
X-Posure
https://youtu.be/qp_loEh3mfA?si=4JJ-DgmqcQrDRg9a
Sunday Night Music Club
https://youtu.be/qctW1gSBKRs?si=6CTnVPl9I5BT_qUR
Sidetracked
https://youtu.be/Zh4jlXJklkk?si=GBxbYO_it8yAIXvK
Rock Show
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0025z0z
Reminder that there's another interview with Robert that airs tonight.
This time on BBC Radio 1's Rock Show with Daniel P Carter at 10pm UK time.
US start times are 5pm eastern, 4pm central, 3pm mountain, 2pm pacific and noon in Hawaii.
From NME:
Robert Smith on why he dislikes The Cure’s ‘4:13 Dream’: “It was nowhere near what I wanted it to be”
By Liberty Dunworth
Robert Smith has opened up about his relationship with The Cure‘s ‘4:13 Dream’, saying that he isn’t a fan of how it turned out.
The frontman looked back at the 2008 record during a new interview with Annie Mac and Nick Grimshaw, in which he celebrated the release of the band’s latest LP, ‘Songs Of A Lost World’.
Reflecting on his relationship with ‘4:13 Dream’ nearly 16 years on, Smith revealed that the finished product didn’t match the initial vision he had, partly because he wanted it to be much longer.
“If I’m really honest I was trying to make an album in 2008 which was a double album and it was really odd,” he began. “It had all kinds of stuff on it, instrumental stuff – and I was pressured into reducing it all down into a single album… I have never felt happy about it. “
He continued, suggesting that he has been tempted to resume work on the album to help finally capture the vision he initially had “I bristle a little bit about it. At some point, before I fall over, I’m determined…” he said.
“There are 13 songs from those sessions that never got released. It was a double album and the whole idea of ‘4:13 Dream’ was that it was like a fever dream. As it turned out, it wasn’t. It was nowhere near what I wanted it to be.
“I learnt a lesson [from that], and maybe that’s why we didn’t make another album for such a long time! I hated the idea of delivering it to the deadline. It was my own fault. I should’ve just ignored everyone. I was so sickened by the process of [being] commodified, and it really did upset me a lot.”
From Stereogum:
Robert Smith Talks Chappell Roan, Brat Summer, His Viral 2019 Rock Hall Interview
By Tom Breihan
Two months ago, the Cure returned with Songs Of A Lost World, their first new album in 16 years. It’s fucking awesome. Part of the record’s magic is the idea that a record like this, a vintage Cure record that absolutely envelops you, can exist as part of the current pop landscape. It seems like it’s been beamed in from another time, and it doesn’t work in conversation with anything that’s being made today. So it’s a trip to hear Robert Smith talking about his present-day pop contemporaries.
Robert Smith hasn’t done much conventional press to promote Songs Of A Lost World, but he’s a guest on the latest episode of Sidetracked, a BBC podcast about music. Sidetracked isn’t an interview show; it’s a regular conversation about music-related stuff that doesn’t always include guests. On this episode, Smith just joins the flow of conversation, insisting that he’s not really part of the current pop landscape but still describing how he fits into it. It’s wild just to hear him say the word “TikTok.”
On the episode, Smith says that he’s “not knowingly” made a TikTok, but he does address a moment that’s recently gone viral. When the Cure were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2019, Smith did a red-carpet interview. When the fired-up host asked if he’s as excited as her, Smith deadpans, “By the sounds of it, no… It’s a bit early, innit?”
On Sidetracked, Smith says, “I felt bad about that… If I’m honest, I didn’t realize that I was being filmed. It’s probably why. We’d just come from quite a serious conversation in our dressing room about what we were doing there, and this wave of enthusiasm was sort of like…”
Smith says that he’s “dimly aware” of the currently-dominant class of pop stars, including those, like Charli XCX and Chappell Roan, who have said nice things about the Cure. He says that he still consumes music by buying records: “I don’t stream music on principle and never have. I’ve only got one connection in the house to the internet. It’s a laptop. I lift the lid, and I do what I do, and I close it. So I don’t really see it as an entrance to music. I listen to the radio, actually, so I’m kind of old-fashioned in that way, as well.”
When asked about Charli XCX’s Brat, Smith goes into a charming riff on his listening habits, younger pop stars, and the presumably-online criticism that they face:
I think it’s great, the way that it took over. It’s hard because the music itself isn’t really something that I would naturally listen to. If I want to listen to stuff and maybe I’ve had a couple of beers, I’ve got such a catalog of music that means something to me, from an age — like ’70s disco, let’s say, Donna Summer or Chic or Sister Sledge, all that kind of stuff. If I’m getting into that headspace, where I’m thinking “yeah, help me up,” it would be that.
I’ve got playlists, iPods. I’ve got loads and loads of different iPods with stickers on them so I know in the dark which one’s gonna play which. They’ve all got stuff on them which suits my mood. There’s so much music I’ve got — not in a nostalgic way, but stuff that I can not just move about to but also means something to me, reminds me of the times and people. So really, it’s kind of unfair, and it would be disingenuous of me to think I’ve bought into Brat Summer or Chappell Roan because it’s not aimed at me. It would be a bit weird if I was like, “Yeah, it’s my favorite.”
I think what they did as artists is really fantastic. I think that I’d be dishonest if I said it’s what I listen to at home. So yes, I’ve been aware of [Charli] for a long, long time. Chappell Roan, although she’s been doing it for a while as well, has only really emerged into wider consciousness over the past year. But anyone that really gets out and does something, I just think it’s great. I really do. I hate people just sitting there and being critical.
When I was younger, you have to develop an ability to ride that kind of criticism. My way of doing it was thinking I’d much rather wake up as me than wake up as anybody else. As long as you think that, criticism does tend to just wash over you. And also, people who criticize you have never done it. It’s invalid. Criticism in general, I take with a pinch of salt. With the stuff that we’re doing, when we’re getting five-star reviews, I was intrigued because I was thinking, “What did we do before that wasn’t five-star?”
Answering a question about Chappell Roan drawing boundaries with fans, Smith had this to say:
It’s a tricky one because it’s a complicated subject. I think what you’re doing as an artist, you want people to feel like they’re engaging with you. But it is a modern-world phenomenon that there’s a sense of entitlement that didn’t used to be there amongst fans. When we started out, it was kind of enough that we did what we did. As a consumer, I didn’t expect something more. It was enough to see Alex Harvey or to see David Bowie. I didn’t expect to hang out with them or get to know them, whereas now it seems almost like that is part of the deal.
As the Cure became more popular, we obviously have experienced quite a lot of obsessive fan behavior down the years, and it can feel quite threatening, honestly. If you have people sleeping outside your front door, it can get very weird. It never bothered me as much as it bothered people around me, but when it comes to your front door and people are there and they feel like somehow the cosmos has fated — you’re dealing with people who perhaps aren’t quite right all the time. How do you respond to this? It’s impossible, really.
The thing that most people don’t think about is when you arrive to a position of celebrity or success over a reasonably fast period of time, it is more difficult to deal with things because you’re not grounded at a lower level. It took us years and years and years of touring, going around the world and doing stuff, until by the time we’d started to get properly famous, I kind of knew how to respond. I’d already developed that as part of who I was. But being famous, if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, I can’t imagine many worse ways of living. It’s horrible being gawked at all the time and prodded and poked and people expecting more of you.
San Jose Mercury News - #1
BBC - #6
The Guardian - #11
KEXP listeners - #2
Brooklyn Vegan - #8
God is in the TV - #1
AV Club - #3
Rolling Stone UK - Top 24
Drowned in Sound - #1
Pop Matters - #12
Record Collector - #1
Yardbarker - #9
DIY - #11
Classic Rock - #11
Stereogum Readers Poll - #8
Alternative Press - Top 50
Vive Le Rock - #2
Line of Best Fit - #47
Vulture - #1
Alternative Press Readers Poll - #3
Pitchfork Readers Poll - #10
NME - #6
New York Times - #9
Louder Than War - #2
NPR - One of their top 50, but not in their top 13
Glide - One of their top 20
Rolling Stone - #48
Paste - #11
Stereogum - #29
Consequence - #20
The Quietus - #62
The Independent - #8
Time Out - #5
Rough Trade - #23
MOJO - #31
Uncut - #69
Another interview with Robert tonight. 8pm in the UK with Danielle Perry on Absolute Radio.
US start times are 3pm eastern, 2pm central, 1pm mountain, noon pacific and 10am in Hawaii.
From Radio X:
The Cure's Robert Smith teases "companion piece" to Songs Of A Lost World with the "saddest" song of all
By Jenny Mensah
The Cure frontman has revealed what to expect from the band's next effort and said it will hopefully be out "next summer".
Robert Smith says The Cure's next album could be "heavier" than their last.
The Cure frontman spoke to Radio X's John Kennedy this week as part of a special X-Posure track by track playback of the band's new Songs Of A Lost World album, where he revealed there's a breadth of work left over, which could very well see itself on the next record.
"There's 32 unreleased songs at the moment sitting in my house," he revealed. "There are another two eight track albums if we wanted. But I think that the next one will be probably 10 songs. I'm finishing the next one. I just can't decide on the running order. It's always which ones fit together best."
Smith also revealed there's so much more material he'd created through the years that he never considered revisiting before, but the response Songs Of A Lost World - which gave them their first UK No. 1 album in 32 years - had him rethinking waiting so long before issuing their next effort.
"We always had about 14, 15 songs left over from the 4:13 Dream sessions as well [from 2008]", the 65-year-old musician added. "So there's an awful lot of stuff that's unreleased and I never thought I'd bother revisiting it. But actually with the way this album has been received, I think maybe it's the right time for me just to go back over stuff and get it out there. Like, finish singing stuff and finish mixing it."
Sharing more details about the next record in particular, the Alone singer added: "The companion piece to Songs Of A Lost World, which will be out hopefully before next summer, is what I'm currently finishing. I just need to mix it. It's not as dark in some ways, although it actually has probably the saddest song of all of them on it."
He went on: "It has a couple of songs that we were playing live which didn't make it onto Songs Of A Lost World and it has some completely new stuff that no one's ever heard [...] There's three songs on it, which are slower than pretty much anything on this album. So I don't know, it may well end up being heavier than this one."
Continuing to talk about some of the tracks on what would be their 15th studio album, Smith revealed that although it's a long way from being "upbeat" in terms of its lyrics, it could include a track the band has been playing for some time which has transformed from a piece about bereavement to a "powerful live song".
"Lyrically, it's a very long way from being an upbeat album," he mused. "It has one song of grief on it which didn't make it onto this album, which is a very, very old song which we've been playing for a long, long time called It Can Never Be the Same. And I think that this next album will have that song on because I think it's about time. It used to be called Christmas Without You.
"When I first wrote it, it was about my mum dying, but it's mutated over the years and that's actually turned into a really powerful live song. That would probably make it on.
"Another song called A Boy I Never Knew - we've redone that. I think that would probably make it on. That's a sad song, but in a completely different way. That's me singing about a boy that died a million years ago. About the death of humanity before it started, I think... or something."
The expansive conversation, which was part of an X-Posure track by track playback of The Cure's Songs Of A Lost World album, saw the frontman discuss the inspiration behind the songs on the record, the encouragement he had from his elder brother to pursue music full-time, his thoughts on mortality and the process of ageing as well as the secret to preserving his voice over the years.
From The Cure's humble beginnings practicing in his parents' extension to the best piece of advice his father ever gave him, the much-loved alternative rock icon seems to leave no stone unturned in this memorable chat, which will be available to listen to this Saturday (14th December) from 11pm.
Reminder for Robert Smith's interview on Radio X today/tonight.
US start times are 6pm eastern, 5pm central, 4pm mountain, 3pm pacific and 1pm in Hawaii.
Listen on the Global Player app, online, and more. Info on how to listen here.
From Robert on Twitter:
IT APPEARS THERE ARE QUITE A FEW 'SIGNED GUITARS' POPPING UP ONLINE?A HEADS UP:UNLESS IT IS ONE OF MY SCHECTER MODELS, YOU CAN BE 99.999% SURE A 'SIGNED GUITAR' HAS NOT BEEN SIGNED BY ME (AND IF THE SALE IS NOT BENEFITTING CHARITY,YOU SHOULDN'T BUY IT ANYWAY!) ...ONWARDS X
