A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I exchanged Top 10 Songs by The Cure lists. He’s an exact contemporary of mine, age-wise, with the fundamental difference here being he discovered the group several years after I did, my awakening coming around 1988, his 1991. Perhaps that has made all the difference, but in reality his tastes are quite different than mine, his seeming stubbornly obscure even to me, not to mention terrible. And then there’s my possibly extreme belief that The Cure really dropped off after Disintegration, much as my R.E.M. experience.
Neither of our lists is in any particular order. Here’s his:
1. A Letter to Elise 2. Pictures of You 3. There Is No If 4. Pirate Ships 5. Strange Attraction
6. The Caterpillar 7. Burn 8. Wrong Number 9. In Between Days 10. The Lovecats
I’d never heard of half of his. Here’s mine:
1. Three Imaginary Boys 2. Do The Hansa 3. Just Like Heaven 4. Catch 5. A Forest
6. The Caterpillar 7. A Night Like This 8. Close To Me (horns version)
9. The Perfect Girl 10. Grinding Halt
And there is a “secret” order to mine. It’s the order I built the list, mostly in my head, by the gut, with a bit of quickly moving through the albums chronologically to be sure I didn’t miss something obvious.
As he pointed out, it’s pretty cool that our overlap is “The Caterpillar,” which makes it fitting that this is the link I provide. We have some near overlap in his numbers nine and ten, which I’d put on a greatest hits of a decent length. He mentioned personal stories (unknown to me) attached to many of his picks; one or two of mine are here partly because of an incident behind them.
There’s so much more that could be said and done with this. For now, I’ll listen to his list sometime soon. The Cure figured pretty greatly in my early life and there’s a lot that reflection upon that, their albums, their songs, their continued existence could bring forth.
For now, I’ll recommend this to those who’d like to explore the breadth of their work over the decades: Cureation: From There to Here From Here to There. A song from each album, starting with the oldest, then back again. A kindred soul in music pointed their efforts like these to me a few years ago and for that I am forever grateful. I know this person hated by #2 song. Maybe we’ll meet again one day.
Meanwhile, what are your favorite Cure songs?
p.s. This is most amusing too! Man of a thousand faces Long live Mad Bob.
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