Warsong: Troxy Live 2024 for Secret 7″ 2025

From NME:

The Cure, Jessie Ware, Scissor Sisters and more for Secret 7″ 2025

The charity initiative will see 700 records auctioned up, each with a different sleeve design by an anonymous artist

By Laura Molloy

Tracks by The Cure, Jessie Ware, Scissor Sisters and more will be featured on ‘War Child Presents Secret 7”.

The charity initiative, which first launched in 2012, takes seven tracks by seven musicians and presses each one to seven inch vinyl 100 times, creating 700 records.

The sleeves for each are then designed by 700 creatives, ranging from renowned artists to newcomers. All sleeves will then be available to purchase via auction after the exhibition. However, the designer’s identity is only revealed after the record is sold.

Alongside the aforementioned names, Frank Turner, Gregory Porter, Keane and Sophie Ellis-Bextor have also contributed songs to this year’s edition of the initiative. You can find a full tracklist further below.

All money raised from the auction will support War Child’s work to provide protection, eduction and specialist mental health support to children affected by conflict around the world.

War Child Secret 7″ 2025 artists:

The Cure – ‘Warsong: Troxy Live 2024’

Frank Turner – ‘Be More Kind’

Gregory Porter – ‘Merchant of Paradise’

Jessie Ware – ‘Beautiful People’

Keane – ‘Black Rain’

Scissor Sisters – ‘Return to Oz’

Sophie Ellis-Bextor – ‘Devotion’ (Brand New Song, Exclusive to War Child’s Secret 7″)

Last year, ‘Secret 7″‘ returned for the first time since 2021 and included tracks from Paul McCartney, Aurora, The Chemical Brothers and more. Among the 700 designers announced following the auction were Jamie Hewlett and Paul Smith.

Charlotte Nimmo, Fundraising Engagement Director at War Child UK says: “We at War Child are so pleased to announce the start of another Secret 7”’s, marking the continuation of a beautifully creative endeavour. Every year, some of the best artists from around the world come together to create 700 truly one-of-a-kind records, to raise funds which enable us to protect, educate and support children whose lives have been affected by wars they didn’t start.

“This year has been horrendous for children caught up in conflict, but the money raised here will help us provide immediate emergency aid, and specialist long term support where it’s needed most,” she continued. “We pride ourselves on working with the best in music and creative arts to create something brilliant that ultimately changes the lives of some of the most vulnerable children around the world, and we can’t wait for everyone to see, and hear, what has been created this year for Secret 7”. We are so grateful to the artists, both musical and visual, for supporting our work, and to everyone that donates to help us do what we do.”

The revealing of the tracklist also marks the opening of public submissions for artwork, with anyone invited to submit a design for a record sleeve. Hopefuls can send digital submissions here between January 13 to February 28.

The Cure’s contribution comes from their 2024 performance at Troxy, which took place on November 1 at London’s Troxy in front of 3000 fans, and was livestreamed for free on YouTube to more than a million people (you can still watch it here). The show coincided with the release of their most recent LP ‘Songs Of A Lost World’.

NME was also there, and noted: “The feel of ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ with its long introductions and heavy tapestry of sound felt so complete and natural for the band – landing live like an addition to the ‘dark trilogy’ of ‘Disintegration’, ‘Pornography’ and ‘Bloodflowers’. As Cooper’s shuddering and monolithic drums brought in ‘Endsong’ before Gabrels’ howling and epic guitar solo, the first set closed as one that will go down in history for fans of The Cure.”

The life-affirming misery of the Cure

From The Spectator:

The life-affirming misery of the Cure

No one does bleakness better than Robert Smith

By Tanith Carey

Watching the Cure’s live-streamed performance of their first album in 16 years, it was hard not to notice the toll time has taken on Robert Smith. At 65, his black spiky hair has long turned into a bedhead of fag-ash grey – a reminder to those of us who have grown up with him that none of us are as young as we used to be.

As the slow waltz of the first track of Songs of a Lost World kicked in, and Smith wailed ‘Where did it go?’, it was starting to look like a very gloomy evening indeed – even by the standards of a band hardly known for its cheeriness.

I’ll admit that as I started to watch the Troxy gig live from my sofa, even I, as a long-time Cure fan, worried how dark it was going to get. And sure enough, along came seven more songs covering the death of loved ones, ageing, regret and fear for the future.

Many of Smith’s fans have grown up with him – and now he speaks for those of us who are looking in the mirror also ‘wondering how I got so old’

But then, along the way, something else happened too. Despite all the lyrics about endings, goodbyes and losses, the momentum kept building, propelled by pounding drums and shimmering guitar cadences. By the three heartfelt ‘nothings’ of ‘Endsong’ that finally brought the record to a close, it all felt strangely cathartic. Radiant, even.

And it seems I’m not the only one who felt this way. After its release at the start of November, the undeniably bleak Songs of a Lost World became one of the fastest-selling albums of 2024, at one point outselling the entire rest of the top ten of the week combined. So how did the launch of this gloomy LP become one of the defining musical moments of the year?

For me, the power of Smith’s music lies in the fact that it manages to be just so gloriously miserable. Many of his fans have grown up with him – and now he speaks for those of us who are looking in the mirror also ‘wondering how I got so old’ when we don’t feel a day over 21. And as he – and his audience – grow older, stories of heartbreak of all kinds become even more heartfelt. We’ve known him long enough to trust him to be a comforting conduit for our sadness with tracks like ‘Plainsong’ and ‘From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea’. 

What is also poignant about this record is that if you close your eyes, Smith’s voice is as undiminished as when we first played cassette tapes of the Cure in our teenage bedrooms and sung along about being in love on Fridays. The songs themselves might not offer much by way of escapism, but that voice does.

There’s also something comforting about the fact that Smith, who released the first Cure record in 1979, remains resolutely un-rockstar-ish. While other musicians pronounce on world peace, when the Cure last headlined Glastonbury in 2019, Smith joked that he was going for the record for the frontman who said the least at the festival – and true to his word, he did nothing but sing for the first 45 minutes. He seems to have taken the ageing process in his stride and is happiest taking walks around his land to check on his sheep. He can’t even be bothered to own a phone, saying that the only reason he’s on social media is so no one else can pretend to be him.

So perhaps it could only be Robert Smith who could make the exact record we need at the crossroads we are facing at the start of 2025 – utterly bleak, oh yes, but beautiful and brilliant too. I believe the secret of the success of Songs of a Lost World is that after listening to it, some of us feel less alone with our worries. After all these years, no one does misery better – and there’s a comfort in that