The Cure's "Just Like Heaven"

♪ Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick ♪ ♪ The woman makes me scream, she said ♪ ♪ The woman makes me laugh, she said ♪ ♪ Throw her arms around my neck ♪ ♪ Get your heart in your cold ♪ ♪ You're yes and you're no, you're in and you're out ♪ ♪ You're up and out ♪ ♪ You believe in life after life ♪ ♪ You believe in life that's true love ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'm like a bird, not only by a wing ♪ ♪ I don't know where my soul is ♪ ♪ I don't know where my home is ♪ ♪ Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me ♪ ♪ I ain't this sharpest tool in the ship ♪ ♪ You must not know about me, you must not know about me ♪ ♪ I can never know that you in a minute ♪ ♪ Man I think he'll be here in a minute ♪ ♪ Check it out, I know who I want to take me home ♪ ♪ I know who I want to take me just like heaven ♪ - So lecturing today, we're talking about a song from one of the biggest and most prolific bands ever. They've been around for 50 years and they've influenced everyone from Olivia Rodrigo to Interpol to the smashing pumpkin. - That's right, Diallo. And today's song is the one that broke them into the American mainstream. It's Pure Euphoria, chiming guitars, driving drums, a build so satisfying you almost don't realize how meticulously it is constructed. - And Hot Tank, we're going to ask the question, is this band the Seminole Goth Band, or not a Goth Band at all? We're talking one song and that song is just like heaven by The Cure. ♪ Show me, show me, show me how you do that ♪ (upbeat music) - Hey, one song listeners. If you love our show, you should check out Trappidal, the podcast where technology meets culture. - Each episode, Trappidal hosts and founder Dan Runsee. Dicks into the strategy behind the media and technology that drives our attention. You'll hear Trappidal explore topics like YouTube's growing influence in music and entertainment. The never ending saga about TikTok's future and how AI is shaping the future. - Media is one of the first industries to get disrupted by the tech. - It's Trappidal's job to keep you ahead of the latest trends. You can listen to Trappidal wherever you get your podcast. That's Trappidal, TR-AP-I-T-A-L. - So good. It's a good song, isn't it? That's not how we talks at all. (laughing) Hey, it's Maybro always to me, from The Cure. Hey, walk out, my ee. Call me. - I'm accurate writer, director, and sometimes Goth, the Allerittle. I'm a producer, DJ, songwriter, musicologist, and always got luxury, AKA the guy who whispers, "Interpolation." - And this is one song. - The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs, the cross-honors, and tell you why they deserve one more listen. - You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before and you can watch one song on YouTube while you're there, please like and subscribe. So today we're talking about The Cure. And I gotta say, what I love about this band is they're not afraid to evolve and keep making music. They just picked up their first-ever Grammy's best alternative music album and best alternative music performance for the song alone. Let's hear a little snippet of a loan. ♪ In the woods ♪ ♪ They're falling out of our stars ♪ - I mean, that song could've gone on after a fascination street. They have not missed a beat. - They have a sound. They have, they definitely have a sound. We're gonna talk about what that sound is, try to break it down a little bit. - He still sounds like Sam Smith. - He still sounds like-- - I guess it helps to always sing like a 60-year-old British man because he sounds the same. - He absolutely does. - It's a luxury. I consider myself a cure fan, but you're a next-level cure fan. What does this band mean to you? - I think they're the band that I listen to the most in my life. I think they're the band that after all of these years of discovering them as a teen. And by the way, when I discovered them as a teen, they were the favorite band of so many of the cool kids at my school. Like Maggie Nelson, it was her favorite band and Louisa Smith. And importantly, Heather Barrett, who famously in our circle of friends, her phone number was 563Cure. (laughing) The cure more bearable. - The stalker, is that how you remember it? - I mean, it's an impossible number to forget. 563Cure. - That's pretty good. It also sounds like a song that could be written by the cure. (laughing) - So they were really important to me in high school and even middle school. As they offer so many people, I think they sort of perennially pick up a new generation of teenagers who can relate and identify with whatever the sound and the goth step we'll be talking about in a few minutes. But that's never left me. And I probably turn to a cure record. I play them on my radio show. Like I'm listening to thinking about talking about the cure kind of my whole life. I don't think, and I can't think of a band that's second to that. As much as I love The Beatles or Zeppelin or whatever. The cure may be my number one day. - I think there's an age that you hit in your teenage years where a band can help kind of define who you identify as. - 100%. - And I think that's, for me, I think it was like the name of Tung's crew. I wanted to be in a tribe called Quest or Digable Planets and those kind of groups. It sounds like these guys are who I want to be. - I'll bet you it's a similar thing too where you can identify with a huge part of it is the music. But there's also something about who the people making the music are. And there's also something about the other people listening to that music. And total, I identified with all three. I can tick all three of those boxes with the cure. And I'll bet you can too. I'll just say one more thing about my middle school experience. My first ever concert experience, besides seeing the Manhattan transfer being dragged by my dad when I was a 10th. Literally the one I wanted to go to that I went to was the cure. And that was this amazing epiphany for me when I realized when I got to the Greek theater and Berkeley for the head on the door tour. And I saw all these other like seventh and eighth graders and older who were like looked like the outcasts in their school. It looked like you got the two to three kids from every school who kind of looked like that, who were like the early, got the wearing the black. You know, with the black fingernails and whatever else and all the Robert Smith visualisms. That was the first time I was like, oh, all of these people exist in the world in other schools and other cities and other towns. Let me try it before the internet kids. Right. You could definitely feel isolated. You could feel absolutely alone. And whether it was the record store or a cure concert. When you thought you found your community, that was a big deal. That became my tribe. And I don't think that's ever left me. And I think that's true for a lot of people with this band. 100%. What about you, Tiala? How did you first get into the cure? I, they popped up on my radio, you know, like it was one of those songs. I was like, maybe the second or third time. I used to do my homework with the radio playing. I think it was 99x was the station in Atlanta. And I remember maybe the second or third time I heard love song. I was like, I really like this song. And here's what's interesting. I think you're saying you fell in love with the cure because you got to see them and you got to see this community around them. For the longest time, I didn't know what the cure even looked like. Oh, really? I think it's so funny, like, growing up in a all black environment in Atlanta, where we had famously, like, two non-black kids in my school. I didn't know there was a goth culture. I didn't know there was a whole culture that went with the music. I just appreciated the music. And I came to the cure. I think kind of what you would consider the pop era. Like, I remember liking songs, like, love songs. ♪ I'm a man far away ♪ ♪ I'm always loved ♪ Friday, I'm in love. ♪ I said it's Friday, I'm in love. ♪ And hi, on the radio, and in Atlanta on MTV. Let's check out a clip from the music video, "Hi," which is one of my favorites. It's a sunny day in LA today. And I gotta say, anytime it's sunny and I feel well rested, this is the song that plays for free in my head. This is "Hi." ♪ When I see you skies are kind ♪ Let's try as I might. ♪ I don't get that fun ♪ By the way, that video looks like I'm in a tree physically high at a beautiful world. - Videos used to be so much more literal back in the day. - Literally, like, you say, "See you in a beautiful world." It's just one of those songs. - Blast you, beautiful. - Yeah, Blast the globe. - Blast the cloudless skies. But the skies, if it weren't for songs like these, I might not have even gotten into the cure. But these are songs that broke through in the mainstream, at least in Atlanta. These are songs that got me to go back and discover their earlier stuff. But I wonder, luxury, as a long time fan of the band, how did you feel about this period? And this album, Wish, which is one of my favorites. - Honestly, Wish was a little bit, they had already lost me a little bit with the album we're talking about today. Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me. And but when I think-- - Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me is a divisive album. I feel like in the cure fandom. - It's a great record. It's also very long. And it has a lot of songs that had they left them out. I might not have had a problem with it. But there's a shark jumping moment or two on this record. - Wow. - So you're referring to specifically the 1992 record, Wish, right. And prior to that, we had disintegration and prior to that, which is another perfect album. And what we're gonna talk about today is this cure, the 50 years, there's a lot of music. There's the duration of this band means that there's a lot of different sonic directions they take from one record to the next, one song to the next on the record. But to your question, I think in 1987, it felt like the end, sort of it's a book ending for me a little bit of the band, and I would extend it to disintegration. That is prime cure for me. That's the cure that I go back to when I say, I keep going back to it. After that, they really double down on these beautiful, more pop songs that take into account some of the curisms that we'll be talking about. Some of the sound quality, some of the rhythmic qualities. But they lose a little bit of the darkness, sometimes a little bit more than I'd like. - Even though it's something like disintegration, you'd think it didn't change. - I would say that's a record that has some of it. that's the bookend right there. On Kiss Me Kiss Me, they sort of allude to what's going to come next with like more songs that are like beautiful. I don't have any problem with them. It's just not what I want from the cure. This kind of reminds me of our depeche mode double episode because I think you are more of a fan of like the earliest depeche mode. I'm more of a fan of like the sort of like violator depeche mode. And there's no doubt that we become fans of when we get into them. Well, yes, they're also I think that yes, because I got them to blur late and went back and discovered earlier blur albums. I think at the end of the day, we are fans of depeche mode. We are fans of the cure. And I'm sure that there's some songs on Wish that you like. And there are definitely some songs on their earlier albums that I love. And we're going to get into some of those as well. And there's a lot of ways to be a fan. And you know, sometimes being a fan means you're so locked in something meant so much to you in the early work. Yeah. That it when the band naturally evolves and in this case, when they leave the cavern and start, you know, silent to signing to beca. Robert Smith didn't just want to make a forest over and over again. I would have loved that band. But there's something natural about evolving, but sometimes a fan like me is like, but I like these 10 years. You remember the first time you heard just like heaven? It was very likely on 120 minutes, which I watched religiously on MTV every Sunday night. Yeah. I think before or after the young ones, I can't remember the sequence, but I watched that whole block of that was me. I was locked in every Sunday night. So it's likely I would have seen it there. Why don't we play a little bit of the just like heaven music video? We're not a god band. I like the stripped down 80s music video. Yeah, there's very little set dress there. It's pretty much on a white psyched, you know, that they throw nice blue gel on. It's just a performance. Like a cactus, I think over here in the corner. It's nothing like that. It's just a performance video. And you see all of them as their instrumental parts come in, which is very satisfying because what you're seeing is what you're hearing, and sometimes that's all you really need in the video. I hope I'm not jumping the gun, but has the lineup of the cure basically stayed the same. We know that Robert Smith's been there the whole time. Let me just give you the really quick rundown. 14 studio LPs that the stand has made. The first one three imaginary boys was the three imaginary boys were Robert Smith, Lawrence, Lawl, Tallhurst, British accent, Lawl, probably. And Michael Dempsey was the first bass player. That record is amazing. It's sort of stand alone. It's a little bit more post punk, a little more buzz cocky. It hasn't quite got the goth stuff in there yet. The next three records are really the goth core of the band. And that's 17 seconds, faith, and pornography. And those lineups had a replacement, very important one, where the bass player was replaced by Simon Gallup, who then is seminal to the band. Yeah. And a lot of ways we're going to talk about it. I hear the bass of these songs. And today we're, listen, we're talking about just like heaven. It's important to point out by the time the song came out, they're already been, as you said, they don't even around for a decade. They're already been six albums under their belt. And these earlier albums, we're going to talk about them. They were darker. They were of a goth, I'd say, new wave. I'd even argue sort of a punk, who's punk. And yeah, the sound evolved. So this core period of like where I think the gothness really hardens because of the sound and because of the look really. And because of some of the curisms we'll be talking about today, get established on a lot of these records. There's a moment from 82 to 84 after the record pornography, where Robert Smith's kind of in the wild a little bit. He's going through a lot, drinking a lot, drugging a lot. He's had a fight with Gallup. Simon Gallup, who's no longer part of the, it's just the two of them again. And almost as a rebellion against this goth period, this is when you start to get Robert Smith and the cure coming up with songs like Let's Go To Bed. The love cats, the walk, which is one of I think our shared favorites. And what's important about this though is that not only has the lineup shrunken, but this is when Robert Smith starts to realize, hey, I can have more fun with this. We're going to talk about this a little more when we get into the goth stuff. But the pop music it's important to remember really starts in 82, like in Let's Go To Bed, which is intentionally meant to be like an anti goth song. He's like, I'm no longer, I'm no longer doing this sound exclusively anymore. I'm going to be doing what I want to do. And I'm going to be exploratory in pop music and try to come up with new, find new sounds and new melodies that are more along the pop lines. Well, let's hear a song from one of their early albums. This is from their second album. This is a song called, it's one of our joint favorite. This is probably my favorite cure song. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Even though I said just like that, you don't think it's the best, you just think it's your personal favorite. See, this is going to be the show today. This is going to be the show today. It is my favorite. It's his favorite. He doesn't think it's the best. He does not think this is the best thing to do. I am not going to be consistent. But it's his favorite. And I remember the right to be inconsistent today. This is a favorite known as a forest. Let's make the listening audience guess what's happening in the video. Can you guess what's happening? Hit a forest. Would you, if you say a worm's eye, if you have some very tall trees that you are correct. And then Robert Smith comes on and he doesn't look like the Robert Smith we know. He has almost looks like he's in diva, but he's wearing a green hat. He hasn't become the quintessential golf. No, it's got punk edge. And can I just talk about Robert Smith's voice? He's always had this sort of like, sort of like, bratty. I'm just so weak and weakened by whatever emotion I feel that like, he always does this. It's a lot of yelping, a lot of moaning, a lot of sighing, a lot of mouth, a lot of sounds that are melodic, but aren't necessarily like melodies. In addition to the melodies, there's all these peripheral sounds that are part of the a moaning part of the character, part of the emotional output. I once heard the goss, there's a lot of people who made goss music were heavily influenced by Jim Morrison and the doors. And I can kind of see it because I feel like there's this sort of like the same way Jim Morrison has like the growl. Yeah. And that's how he emotes. I feel like a lot of the goss, they're so emotional. And they're like, they're like, it's let's not be afraid to put this emotion in our voice. Listen, let's go there. It's time to talk about what is goth. What is it? Sure. Is the cure goth? Were they goth? Are they ever, if you were goth before? Are you, are you forever goth? All of these questions come into play. So what we've talked about genre many times on the shows, one of our favorite topics, because it's really important. I think a lot of people can get locked into this idea that it's only one thing. And it can't be anything else. But the actuality of what genre tends to be is you have to separate it. There's what the music sounds like. Sure. There's the lyrical content. There's what maybe the band looks like of the visuals, right? Or even the perfect like the artwork and everything, everything aesthetic about the musical packaging. And then there's who is listening to it and what sort of tribe do they belong to? And is there something that they share? Something they have in common? That these are sort of some of the component parts, maybe the main ones of genre. But if you just say this is goth or this isn't goth, you're going to get lost and be wrong fairly quickly. Because it's a very reductive and oversimplified thing to say. And let me try to break down just some of that. I would say that the earliest bands that would be considered goth, not by them for the most part, but by people who like goth music, such as myself, would include but not be limited to Susie and the Banshee. Love Susie. The birthday party and Nick Cave. The damned of all people, like literally considered one of the first punk bands, but basically after that first record, they become kind of a goth. And in no small part because of what Dave Vanian, the lead singer, looks like. And he was a grave digger, which is part of where that look comes from. And by the way, Susie and the Banshee were also punks before they started. And a lot of it was just the visuals came before the sound. I'll just say I'm a few more southern death cult, throbbing, gristle, killing joke, bow house. Well, killing joke is so slipped on. Killing joke is one of my favorite songs, 80s. Yeah, 80s by Killing joke is amazing. So good. I would say that what these bands have in common that make them goth are a little bit more thematic and visual than sonic. But some of the sonics of the music they made become concretized into if I sit down and want to write a goth song, I'm going to start using some of the for example, guitar effects. And I'm going to create some of the moods and atmospheres that come from having boss pedals like a flange and a delay and a chorus pedal. These are three literally off the rack inexpensive guitar pedals that a lot of these bands used. So when you hear their music, one defining theme that runs through a lot of it, especially with the cure, especially with the cure and Susie are these guitar pedals and some of the sounds and some of the swirl that they create. And I think geography comes into play too because a lot of these groups are like, you know, I think there was like even if they were from America, they were often thought of as English. What I didn't know at the time is that some of this goth culture, at least some of the influences actually have roots in like the Caribbean and Haitian and other places that you know, you don't typically think of black people being goss. I certainly didn't. But like as more people have gotten into sort of like Afro goth, they've they've formed their own community sort of like drawing on stuff like the cure and Susie, but also bringing stuff like voodoo and and and and a lot of black coding. It sort of speaks to something that I read in an interview with Robert Smith where he said, I feel a community of spirit with gods and other subcultures. who choose to live an alternative lifestyle, but I wouldn't consider myself to be a part of it. Robert has said many times he doesn't consider the cure to be a God band saying that it was more of a phase for them. But I think to your point, you know, everybody sort of picks and chooses what part of God that they will pick off of. I completely agree. And that's interesting. He said that there's something actually related to religion, I would say too, because some of the sonics of the music, especially these early, you mentioned geography, it's also the time. So 1980, 81 England and Australia with the birthday party. Margaret Thatcher. There's Margaret Thatcher. There's also, I think, a rejection, just like punk rock is kind of a questioning of politics and power. I'd say a lot of goth music, like lyrically, a lot of the content, a lot of the ideas are questioning religion, and some of the presumptions of religion. In fact, Robert Smith and other Robert Smith quote, for the record faith, which is called faith for not no reason. He says, I used to go and write songs in church. I think about death. I'd look at all the people in church and I knew that they were all there, above all, because they wanted, quote, eternity. And I was thinking about when you're young, you're indoctrinated and forced to believe in something. So for him, this early, you know, again, seminal helps create the template for the sound and feel and lyrical content of God is about questioning faith. It's about questioning these things that are kind of imposed upon you by the, you know, your family perhaps and people in your community and the church elders. And this idea, it's like, you know, well, maybe we should question that we shouldn't take that. And some of it is a reclamation of the imagery and sound a little bit of the imagery. I think of Catholic church imagery. It's very dark, right? There's a sort of brutality about a lot of it. And even the sound, a lot of the reverb on the vocals and like even the minor key. It's sort of harkens to some Gregorian chant melodies and minor chemilities. So there's kind of, there's something about the church. We call it goth, not for no reason, gothic architecture. We're churches. Yeah. Of the medieval period. What would you say is the pinnacle of the band's gothness? Probably the pornography record. And there's going to be songs before and after that. But that record to me is the darkest record. It's sometimes the hardest one to listen to, but it's really good. And just the first line off the first song of the record tells you everything you need to know. Let's listen to the live version of 100 years. This is from Glasgow 1984. Ready? First line. Doesn't matter if we all die. That's a mission statement. As a mission statement. For those of you not watching us on YouTube, imagine Robert Smith looking the most like Robert Smith, you know, like looking literally like a bat. He almost looks like and the crowd looks like those videos of like the bats in their cage hanging upside down, but then they flip it. And it was just like a golf part. That's what the crowd was like. Those are my people, man. This is the coolest band. I love it. In their coolest era 1984 cure, it's like peak to peak all the way. It's up to the late eighties, I would say. What a great performance. I'm glad you put that on the radar. There's so many live performances that are amazing on YouTube. And sometimes you're just like, I just want to see like this band and that. And since we mentioned the iconic visuals right, a couple times now, this is this is now Robert going from not looking like Robert Smith. It reminds me very much like Robert Smith, which is the classic Robert Smith is the big black tussled hair with lots of like hairspray and it sticks up. It's the lipstick, which is smeared. Uh-huh. And a fun thing. My favorite kind of lipstick when it's smeared. It's smeared. It's smeared. It's so much. One theory as to the origin of that look, which we've come to think is so iconic. And so got. Yeah. Actually from Steve Severin, the Susie and the Banshee's bassist. Now you have to remember that in 1982. That was this year by the way, a bass god in my opinion, like, like the cure that when you hear a good bass line on a Susie track, like, you're just like, oh my gosh. Susie, one another one of my favorite bands of all time. We're definitely going to do an episode. Yeah. So I mentioned in 1982, sort of the wilderness years begin where he's no longer playing Simon Gallup isn't in the band for two years. They're not even talking. They had a big fist fight at a bar after a gig. That's why they break up. So in this moment, Robert Smith, in addition to making these sort of poppy singles, joins Susie and the Banshee's. He's in that band as a touring guitar player for about 18 months, works on the record hyena. And for him, it's a relief to not be the singer, to just be the guitar player and somebody else's band. But importantly, as Steve Severin says, quote, he was definitely influenced by Susie. You only have to look at him before and after the Banshee's to see that. So let's put Robert Smith side by side on the screen who it's Susie Sue from Susie and he even has a theory about the smeared lipstick. So here's Steve Severin's smeared lipstick origin theory. We all went to a club in the West end called Legends on opium or maybe it was LSD. I like it when you don't know what you're trying to do. Robert borrowed Susie's lipstick, went to the toilet and when he came back, he had on the trademark wonky lipstick on and that was it forever. So Susie and Robert Smith, you never see them together anymore. I wonder, you know, can we be sure? Can we be sure they're not the same? Hey, man, Paul is dead. All right. I think to the uninitiated, sometimes there's this idea that like God has to be like this sad, dreary music. And obviously there are songs like that that I love. You know, pictures of you come from. There's a delicious wallowing. Yes, there's a wallowing. But allow me to point out that there are a lot of poppy songs, even in the early part of the Cures catalog, but they're usually the singles. When they were touring and support a pornography, they released a singles compilation. One of my favorite albums that I ever own. Japanese whispers. It has many of their biggest songs, including this 1983 classic Love Cats. You know, that one from Halloween. That's a really, really fun one. And it's a very fun video. Also, a personal favorite of mine, The Walk. I think The Walk is one of those songs I'm really going to every time. I called you after midnight. Robert Smith is like the guy from Interpol. I just feel like maybe it's the register of my voice, but I feel like we can all sing like them. I passed the Howling woman. I think he's the Howling woman. He's the Howling woman, for sure. Or maybe it's Susan. I love the cure. I'm so excited we're doing this episode. We're going to take a quick break. But when we get back, we're diving into the track. Robert Smith himself has called the best pop song the Cures have ever done. Also, what's the Cureism? We've said it a couple of times on this episode. You might be asking yourself, are there elements that you can add to any song to make it sound more like The Cure? Stick around. We'll break it down after this. Hey guys, it's the top of the year. And look, if you're like me, you're trying to figure out your finances. You're thinking about maybe I should pay off some debt. Maybe I should build an emergency fund with everything going on out here. You know, there's also like milestones coming up. Like kids tuition, retirement, all kinds of things. And I know it can feel overwhelming sometimes. But here's a solution. Do you want a tool that helps you plan project and proactively achieve your financial goals? Set yourself up for financial success this year. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. That's right. It brings your entire financial life budgeting, accounts, even investments, network, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this year and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with Code One Song. Set yourself up for financial success in 2026 with Monarch. The all-in-one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use Code One Song at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at Monarch.com with Code O-N-E-S-O-N-G. One song. All right, welcome back to One Song. So, luxury you and Robert Smith think this is the best Curacao. Not your favorite, but the best. No less. And it's an incredible song. No doubt. We think that it actually establishes what we're going to call on One Song. We're going to copyright this. We're going to call it Currisms. These are these are elements. These are things in so many of our favorite Curious songs. It's just seemed to be recurring. It's kind of a checklist of things. You want to find all of these in every song. But these a lot of these ideas show up in a lot of places. Let's off some Currisms for us, my man. All right, let's start with the sound. Literally the sound of the instruments and some of the effects that they're using are very iconic. And in many ways, they're very simple. They're off the rack pedals in a lot of cases and off the rack guitars and, you know, strings that you can buy. But the way obviously they are used and mixed and the actual performance by the players gives them a really iconic sound. I'll be specific. Let me just play an example of One Song that to me epitomizes just like the sound of the QR. And not coincidentally, it is the song that they play first in a lot of their concerts, not least of which is my favorite QR concert video. This is from in orange live in orange 1988 Shake Dog Shake. Just those strums. Man, this is tickles every part of like the pleasure centers in my brain. Just those initial whole note guitar strums are layered and lathered and bathing in effects. And some of the effects in this song in particular, what I hear are the chorus. Literally a boss chorus pedal, 100 bucks at any guitar center, the flange, another boss guitar pedal, probably a phaser might be in there as well. These very simple effects pedals very much define a lot of the sound of a lot of those bands and hugely define I would say the QR because both Robert Smith on his guitar affect is using them. And so, is Simon Gallup on the base? - So, here's the number one boss effect pedals. What's our next curism? - Another major, major thing is the use of rhythmic motifs. And what this sort of is an insight into is that when you have a melody that's memorable, it's comprised of two things, the pitch and the rhythm. And what I think Robert Smith and company do is extract that rhythmic thing and give it to the bass, give it to the drums. And these are all hooks and like little, they feel like melodies that you're excited to hear them come up in the song. But they're not necessarily always melodic. And a lot of times they're really persistent through the song. We're gonna hear this today in just like heaven. There's a base motif in particular that we hear in this song and other cure songs. - What are those? - That's a very familiar one. So here are a couple of examples of motifs. This is Fascination Street. Listen to the bass line on this song and then we'll talk about it. (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) - Now let me just say one thing. Listen to that motif. That particular motif goes through the whole song becomes very hypnotic to hear this rhythm. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And now that I've said that in the room without pitch, does that remind you of anything? - No. - Da-da-da-da-da-da. - That's Phil Collins in the air. That's the same rhythm in the drum. (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) - It's found in a lot of things. It's also found in the Beatles and the Ends. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. (upbeat music) So that rhythmic motif is carried through the whole song and it's very cure to have a rhythmic motif carry through the song. Another example and there are many more. I'll just give you a few more. Check out Close to Me. Close to Me is great song. (upbeat music) - Hot, hot, hot has the famous three on E. - Yeah. - Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. (upbeat music) - And one last one. - One of my favorites. - I'll play it for you. - I know this one well. (upbeat music) ♪ One can all be you ♪ ♪ One can all be you ♪ - Long time listeners of the show, what does that sound like? - Oh, and you're gonna say a child called Malice. - Which is part of the family that we talked about on the E-Family. - It's part of the family. - I think it was just a thing that people forget. People used to dance at dance clubs. Even at rock clubs. Like the gospel, you always want a song where you can kind of go like this. - Exactly. - Like those people who were about to get killed by the Terminator and that one scene, when he walked into the club and they were playing intimacy, intimacy. I, which actually sounds like an interpol early cure song. So go back and watch the Terminator intimacy. Great track. - The cure of Why Can't I Be You uses the same rhythmic motif that we heard in Iggy Pop, Lust for Life. Go back to that episode 'cause we named 20 other songs. Not the least of which is town called Malice. You just walking on sunshine, Katrina, and the waves. Jen, are you gonna be my girl? So it's part of that rhythmic motif family as well. - So, cure is the number two rhythmic motifs. That run through the whole song. - That run through the whole song. I have a curism I want to throw out there. I think you'll agree with it. I noticed that he likes to bring in instruments one at a time. - Absolutely. - Like, I didn't notice this until we started working on this episode. But now I can't unhear it. Like, it's such a curism. - It's the Bob Build. Bob's always building. - Robert Smith being Bob. - Talk to us about this curism. - Well, we just heard it on Fascination Street, right? It tends to start with maybe two instruments, maybe one. - Yeah, we heard it on high. We heard it on so many of these songs. - We think we're gonna hear it on just like Heaven. It's just the introduction of instruments over the span of many bars. So in just like Heaven, you're gonna be hearing drums and bass. And then the first guitar comes in. Then the second guitar comes in. Then the third guitar comes in with the melody. And the keyboards, I think I forgot to mention it in there. But basically, there's a build that lasts nearly an entire minute before we hear any vocals. - He's not a guy who comes in right on the song. - Not always, yeah. Sometimes it doesn't matter if we all die. He likes to give you a solid minute and a half sometimes of just the instruments. And then he's like, okay, now I'll say it. - But that build, Bob's build is definitely a major curism. - Curious of number three, Bob's build. Gradually bringing in instruments over the course of the first years. - I'm glad you're calling it Bob's build, thanks. - What's the next curism? - Next up, we have chord cycles, number four. And to be clear, this is sort of like a checklist. Not every song does this and not exclusively, cure songs do this, but very often in this. And in the song we're talking about today, there's a cycle of chords, sort of like the motif that hypnotically repeats throughout the entirety of the song. They're often four of them and they're often quite a satisfying within the four chords you sort of get the tension, the build and the release and then you're back to one again. So that chord change family thing we've talked about on many episodes. - And we did our medley of songs at the top of the episode. - Exactly right, all of the songs and are medley at the beginning of this episode, cycle through the same four chords and the point we were making as many songs are in that family. - That's right. When we get to the guitars in the stems, but that's part of the chord cycle thing that is a cure ism. - Cure is the number four chord cycles. I have one more that I think we agree upon, which is it wouldn't be a cure song without the voice of Robert Smith. Such a distinct voice, such a, like there's so much emotion in his voice, like he sort of like helps it out. Like we were joking, like, how would he describe like today in LA? And be like, it's a beautiful day in LA. Like, you know, like there's so many things he does, but so distinctive, yeah. - It's so distinctive, but it's so emotional and it really just draws you in because he taps into, I think, something that we all feel, especially if you're like an outsider, which is just like, why can't I be you? - It's very yearning and trying. - Yes. - It's effort-filled. - He was frustration, I think there's some frustration in there like-- - I got to. - Why can't I fit in? You're looking, you're having fun. Are you looking like you're having fun? - He'd be the first to say that he's no shotgun con. Like, he's not like a master. - I'm not a shotgun con. - He's a great singer because we relate emotionally to what he's saying, but not necessarily 'cause he's like a masterfully powerful, like church level, you know, the voice level singer. - He helps all these songs be releasing along that you don't have to be shotgun con. - That's right. - Look, I'll try to be shotgun con. - I often try. - He enough drinks with me and it's nighttime, I will try to be shotgun con. But even sober, we all think we could be Robert Smith to a certain extent. - We all can be Robert Smith. It's accessible to your point. - That's what I run it. He what is why he can't be you, but we're like, why can't we be him? - There's that whole slate of bands in the early arts, like VHS or Beta. - Andrew Paul. - The rapture. - Oh yeah, the rapture. - Hot, hot, these were, there are many bands that were loving Robert Smith's voice and kind of sound like him. Go back and listen to some of the sounds. - Absolutely. ♪ Better jazz, better jazz, my heart's real ♪ ♪ Better jazz, better jazz, better jazz ♪ ♪ Open down my lips and my heart's real ♪ - That's very Robert Smith. - Absolutely. - So, curism number five, sound like Robert Smith. (laughing) Robert Smith vocals to a lot. - And arguably the most important thing because out of the 50 year history, Robert Smith is the only consistent through line for all of the songs you've ever heard by the Cure. They all feature him on vocals. - That's very true. - All right, without further ado, let's start with those iconic driving drums. - All right, here's Boris Williams at 152 BPM. (upbeat music) - So, one thing I wanna point out is we're gonna hear three motifs, and you just heard two of them. One, motif A, I'll call it, is the drum fill that starts, what is essentially a 16-bar loop that goes through the whole song, but with these really satisfying two things, motifs. So, these are patterns that we hear over and over. And there's a specific symbol that he's using, which is relatively unusual in pop music, not never, but it's kind of more of a metal sound. So, listen for the crash symbol. It's a special kind of crash that I'll be explaining in just a moment. So, I'll point it out here, it comes in this section, right here. (upbeat music) Sounds a little different from your typical crash. We're gonna hear it again right here. (upbeat music) And then finally, this is the third motif, which happens at the end of the cycle, to get us back to the next loop. Two things to listen for, one is that crash, which I've already mentioned, but we're also that crash, and we're emphasizing the two. We're not coming in on the one, we're coming in on the two, I'll point that out. - Okay. (upbeat music) - One, two. - Yeah. - So, all the way through, all of those motifs really emphasize that two. I'll play the second one again. Here we go. One, two, yeah. So, that's a really important thing. The two is emphasized the song a lot by those motifs, and the fact that he's hitting his China crash, which is kind of more heard in metal and maybe jazz than it is in most pop music. What it is, it's a crash symbol, just like any other you'd see on a drum kit. The difference is that it's a little higher in pitch, it's bright, it's crisp, and it's kind of metallic sounding. So, it's a very small detail, but it's a distinctive sounding as well. - But it really helps determine the character of the song, you know? - The work character is like, why is that two, like, why is it making you go, like, it's like trying to drag a moody golf teenager, you know, to school in the morning, like, you know, it's just like, okay, mom, I guess, I'll come, you know, like, it's like, that two does a lot. - I think it's like, what would be the opposite? If it landed on the one, it would be like, one, two, three, four, like, one is way too go get it. - Yeah. - You gotta drag those guys. - Two is against their will. - Yeah, two is against the will, man. That crashed and we'll keep it a beat too late. While we're on the subject of the motif, let's talk about the bass. Let's talk about the bass because that's the motif that motifs are made of in this song. This is Simon. I mean motif. I mean, I would say Simon Gallup is an unsung hero, not just of this song, but of this band. So this is Simon on bass. And just to give him a little flowers, he's had the longest tenure in the QR besides Bob, the longest standing member, minus those two years when they had a bar room fight between them and didn't talk for 18 months. Who has the head of bar room fight with their partner? Am I right? Luxury. I think after this episode, we haven't already. I would say that Simon Gallup is the main motif man in the cure. Motifs can happen in every instrument. We just heard them in the drums. But boy, we hear a lot of motifs across cure songs in the bass. So in this particular instance, this is a very cure motif because we've heard it in other cure songs. It's this two-bar loop and the rhythm is Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, which as long time cure fans might recognize is also used in in between days from 1980 So that's the Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun. Now let's listen to Simon Gallup's isolated bass stems from just like heaven. So that rhythm is literally 1, 2, 3, and 4, and 1, 1, 2, 3, and 4, and 4, and we're hearing it in that song. Same as we're hearing it in "In Between Days," there's a tiny, you know, there's one additional eighth note. And it's a motif they'd use again in "Friday," "I'm in Love" from 1992. [Music] This is a curism that the cure uses themselves as a curism to remind themselves that they are the cure. So we hear that particular motif in it. Hey, Robert, what band are we? I forget. All we the stone roses. Let's go to our checklist, motif number 52. I believe with a cure. I like the idea of the band to remind themselves. It's a cure. The guitars are always very prominent, and I got to ask right off the bat, is this a case of our curism? Like, are there a lot of boss effect pedals in play? Let's listen and find out. [Music] It sounds so far away. Like in a good way. It sounds like. Why are you so far away, she says. Why are you so emotionally distant, Robert Smith and Dan? When you say far away, what do you mean by that? You know, I mean, it might just be the echo or the reverb or whatever, but it does sound immediately dated, not like it was recorded in the '60s or '70s, but there's something very like '80s and early '90s about the way that those guitars sound. I think I can pick up on a couple of things. One of them is the curism. Yeah. So, the '80sness is coming from. There is definitely a chorus on that, the boss. The effects pedals, there's definitely a chorus, there might be a little flange on that particular one. But there's probably. I think I hear some flange. I didn't let you say that. I hear some flange. I think so. And I think that there is some reverb that might be giving it the. Not distant. You said distance, but it's. Yes. When you add reverb to something, it makes it less dry, so it feels like you're in a room. Yeah. It could be a small room. It could be a large room. But reverb is kind of an older sounding effect in a lot of ways. Like it does kind of evoke 60s, feel specter, wall of sound. A lot of that era is more reverb-y than, say, delay, which gives you space in a different way. I'm hearing a little bit of that there. I don't know if that's what you're hearing. That might be a space. It doesn't feel like you're in a chapel. It doesn't feel like the space way up there. Yeah. This is not that Zeppelin. But this is also not like, you know, warm and like, you're next to the guitar. It sounds like you're. No, you're right. A good amount of distance. So the atmospheric, moody guitar sound in our curisms, that happens in this song. And across the catalog is, there is a lot of reverb across the cures catalog. It's not very dry. It doesn't feel close and intimate. No, it's not close and intimate. I think the ultimate effect of all of what we're saying is that it feels moody. It feels a little bit dark, not like in a sinister way, but just sort of like in a dark, gray sky kind of way. So just to put some names to some of these sounds, and I can't necessarily correlate all of them. But Robert Smith is credited with guitars as is another unsung hero of the band and of the song, Paul Thompson, AKA Pearl for his art career. And I say that because Pearl is another member of Robert Smith's coterie that's been around since day one. There's school buds. He was in an early version of the Easy Cure. And he has been not just a musician, and they often call him the best musician in the band because he plays saxophone and he plays keyboard and guitar. But he's also the visual artist behind a lot of the early, and most of the 80s Cure album part. Wow, I didn't know. He was the aesthetician. Paul and his, that's right. Paul and his graphic design partner did that kind of iconic calligraphy, the graphics that you see in a lot of earlier records and videos and album covers. And he's playing guitar on this song. Now I say that because in the video, we see both Robert Smith and Paul playing guitars, Robert's playing the acoustic 12 string. I'm not sure if that means necessarily they were recorded that way. But let's listen and picture in our mind that iconic music video starting with Robert Smith coming in with this acoustic 12 string. It's so great. And it gives it kind of a Spanish. It does. I was going to say, you know, this again takes me back to the best mode episode where they have this big fascination with the American West and Flamingo guitars. And that sort of that, to me, that's the janglingus that I hear in these songs that it's translated over into like, you know, stone roses, happy Mondays, early blur, like that janglingus, like that. And you're right. Flamingo guitar. Smith has been doing that too because in the previous record on the in between days record, there's a song called The Blood, which is just as straight up like Spanish Flamenco song. And last but not least, in the guitar section, we have this incredibly important and iconic melody line, which is literally just a descending and ascending scale. Let's listen and then we'll talk about it. It goes down twice and now it goes up. You once said something on this show that has always stayed with me, which is the idea that like a lot of our favorite songs are literally just ascending or descending broken scales. And that's what I hear now when I hear this part, like it's like, it's going kind of where you expect it to go, but it's going there in a wonderful way and then it comes back down from that, from that high. It's just satisfying its A, A, B, A, and that's a pattern that our ears are used to. And so it's very satisfying. Whether it music or in poetry. Yeah. What about the chords of the song? You know, earlier we did our little medley, my song, Simeisonic, Katy Perry, Cher. And that was based on the sort of like the one, five, two, four, the, what we call the axis of awesome. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, so explain to us how that comes into play here. Right. So the axis of awesome, we've talked about on several other episodes of this show. Go back to Miley Cyrus, The Flowers episode. I think it came up there and I definitely came up on Olivia Rodriguez when we did good for you. So four chords that are, go back to, I think early YouTube. There was this great video by this Australian group, the axis of awesome, who did a medley of dozens of songs that used the chords that you mentioned with one slight variation. So this is, as you mentioned, one, five, two, four. It turns out that 12% of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 use some variation of those four chords, either in that sequence or with some shifting. So the five comes first or the two comes first, or sometimes the two is the six, all coming in one order. Yeah. 12% of songs in popular music. And therefore your ear is very accustomed to hearing these chords together. AI does not disagree with you, my friend. But how does this relate to a song called Another Girl, Another Planet? Well, let's listen to that song and then we'll talk about it. This is by the only ones. It's called Another Girl, Another Planet from 1978. You're having thoughts. My man is having thoughts over here. I can tell when there's thoughts being had. I've heard this song before, but it's just because we've just finished talking about the axis of awesome and these certain chords. And I'm thinking like, don't stop believing, but that's the original axis of awesome. Yeah. That one's in there. These chords are slightly different because the third chord is different. But the difference is, you can rearrange. So the chords in Another Girl, Another Planet are 1564 instead of 1524, but two and six are sort of functionally interchangeable, right? And it's a minor two and a minor six. The rest of the chords are the same. There's a similar tempo. There's obviously a similarity in how there's an instrumental with a melody that rises and falls, basically as a scale in the first 50 seconds of the song before the vocals come in. All those same events take place in just like heaven, right? But when you really break it down and verbalize that out loud, what you're saying is, okay, the chord changes are similar, not identical, but similar. And there is a scale being played, right? Which gets to the point, the heart of the matter on all of these, like, X sounds like Y conversations, which is, well, there are similarities. But is anyone not listening to the first song because the second one can? came out and replaced it, or is it generally the opposite that people often go back in time and find a song that people say sounds like the new one? So Robert Smith himself says, I didn't realize it at the time, but the structure is actually very similar to a song called Another Girl, Another Planet, when we just heard, which, back to his quote, I can still vividly remember hearing on the radio late at night in the mid 70s. The main difference is that as the song progressed, I introduced different chord changes to give it a slightly melancholic feeling. And to that point, the chord changes are not just chord changes, it's actually a key change. So once we get to the U, U lost in lonely part, the song shifts from A major to D major. So let's listen to the stems. Here's what to listen for. We're gonna hear two chords that are just a half step apart, repeating three times that shift from the minor three to the four. It's a very tense, it's a half step. We talked about a half step recently on the Nas episodes. - That's right. - So this half step is very tense. And then after these six bars of tension, we get four bars of really gratifying release on the D major. And we're just kind of lingering there lovingly. So listen for that as I play for you, the isolated guitar. (upbeat music) I'll put some synth in there too. (upbeat music) We're in the four bars of release. It's a real magic trick of songwriting that we left the key, went to this completely different place. - Right. We followed to use Robert Smith's words about what he did. And then we come right back home to this beautiful landscape. - Beautiful, thank God for those major notes. It was sort of like, oh, we're back home, we're safe. - It was very tense and strange. And then we got back, and the strangeness is really emphasized when we get to the vocals. I'll point out some of the ways that the strangeness is emphasized even more. - What's going on with the keys on this song? - I feel like there might be multiple keys. - Not only are there multiple keys, but in the video there are multiple keyboard players. And I'm not sure that either of the people playing keyboards in the video are actually hanging in the song, but it could very well be Laul Tullher's lords, who in the video is shown on one keyboard. He was starting to be a little bit ice out of the band, but he wasn't yet, but there was a second keyboard player who'd been brought in who was more properly able to play keys. And that's Roger O'Donnell. You'll see him in the video. He definitely is not on the song, 'cause he hadn't joined the band yet when the song was recorded. And last but not least, Pearl Thompson is also credited with the keyboards. Let's listen and decide whose fingers this sound like. ♪ ♪ - Big eighties, just one note in an octave. - Yeah. - So that runs through the intro, just big, big setting sound. - And you know, we've talked so much about how he brings instruments one by one, but like I generally join in with the song when these high elements come in. So on Fridays, when the guitar-- ♪ ♪ And on this one, I'm definitely-- ♪ - I picture you hiding in the corner for the first 25 seconds, then you jump out and you play your notes. - Just wait for my notes, man. I'm waiting for my notes. - And then of course, we have this iconic solo, which is very simple and beautiful. Sounds like it's on to my ears. It sounds like it's a piano sound, but it sounds like an 80s keyboard piano, like an insaniac or something like that. Let's listen to it. ♪ ♪ - Oh yeah. With delay on it. ♪ ♪ - I love that part. - And by the way, it should be mentioned, this is relevant especially for the deep cure fandom. At that part of the video, it's Mary Poole, who's actually dancing in the video, which is Robert Smith's longtime girlfriend/wife. He's only to our knowledge as cure fans, like only ever been with her since high school. Another important thing to sort of keep in mind across the cure catalog, he's kind of always singing about Mary. Now, that's extrapolation. - That's so romantic. - It's so romantic. - We can't know. - This should have been our Valentine's Day episode. - There's something so romantic about this. - I think it's important because when you think about the cure, I think about how Robert Smith has always been with Mary. And how all these love songs are to Mary Poole. And you see her as sort of a rare glimpse of her 'cause she's not in the public eye very much, but she is dancing in the video during the solo. And Robert beautifully says, because he dances with her, he says, "The video director was suggesting we get a girl." And he's like, "I'm only gonna dance with one person," and that's Mary. - That explains so much. I think that's why, as opposed to other rock bands, the cure catalog with one notable exception, has aged so well, like, lyrically. Like, there's nothing, there's nothing douchy. That's the cure. - Yeah, there's nothing douchy about the cure. - I love that. - I love that. - Like, I feel like their songs age well, and they actually make sense because he's singing about a legitimate love. He's not like-- - I think the authenticity is right there in the lyrics. Like, it really-- - Oh, that makes me like this fan even more. - Yeah, me too. - For most of my life, including in the run-up to this episode, I heard the opening lyrics wrong. - Everybody. - I heard the one that makes me scream, she's sick. - She's sick. - I thought that was so cool. - The one that makes me scream, she's-- - Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick. The one that makes me scream, she's sick. Like, I thought, like, sick isn't cool, sick isn't like, you know. - You think that's in Robertson's vernacular? - Dude, I know. - I think no. - Mary, you're sick, bro. (laughing) - I thought it was sick, and that line, definitely connected with me. Just because the show, sometimes you can create art and people interpret it wrong, but they just, like, they put it inside themselves. - What should we listen to? - I thought that was the one that makes me scream, she's sick. I thought that was so freaking cool. And when I read the lyrics this week, and I was like, oh, he says she said twice. (laughing) I was like, I've been wrong. I'm sorry, Robert. I should have listened more carefully. I apologize. Here we go, guys. The isolated Robertsmith vocals. - Okay, and challenge for you, the listener. Tell me if you hear any repeated melodies or any rhymes. ♪ Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick. ♪ ♪ The one that makes me scream, she's sick. ♪ ♪ The one that makes me laugh, she's sick. ♪ - All right, there's some rhymes in there. I was wrong about that. But there's not a lot of repeated melodies. She's doing a lot of different things. She's being very playful with the melody. And that's true across all the verses of the song, which are the bulk of the vocals. - They're rhyme-ish. They're near rhymes. - There are some more rhymes than I remember. But there are a lot of near rhymes, and there aren't any, I don't think, repeated melodies in the verses. - That I believe, but it also makes me feel better about thinking that he says she's sick, 'cause I thought he'd rhyme trick with sick. - Oh, well, there you go. There's not for no reason that you thought that. He clearly says she said the second time, and I was like, "Throw her arms around my neck." I was like, "It's rhyme-y, but it's not a rhyme." - Yeah. - And that's okay, because he's being vulnerable. Let Robert sing. - Let's feel it. - Let Robert do what he wants to do. He's talking about Mary Poole. - He's talking about Mary Poole. - He loves Mary Poole. - Let Robert do it. Do his thing? - I thought I'm doing it right now. - Why are you talking to him? - So in that opening line, show me how you do that trick. It sounds really playful. It almost sounds childlike. And that's intentional. Robert Smith has said that part of it actually comes from his childhood obsession with magic tricks. Magic comes up so many times on the show. It's like a lot of musicians want to be magicians. - I don't know if that's, is that true? - I think it's true. I mean, a lot of the episode ended the spectrum on the cool. - A lot of musical. - Well, on the cool. - I think the magicians hands down, right? Everybody. - Everybody wants to be a magician. - No one's going to do that. - Everybody wants to say, "Yeah, it's my dad, the magician." (laughing) - But. - Oh, that was really neat. - That's not the spirit of the show. - Sorry, dad. (laughing) - If your dad's a magician, I apologize. But Robert had this love of magic. But on another level, it can be read as a seduction trick. That's the way I sort of read it. And Robert has said the song is about, quote, "Hyperventilating Kissing and Fating to the Floor." That's what he said. Look, I'm not sure that's my king, but. Hey, to each third. - The man is in love with this woman. - I know, I know. - Bob loves Mary. It's the cutest thing in the world. It's the cutest thing in all of God's history. A half century of Bob loving Mary. It's like if you had a goth puppy and he was in love. It's goth puppy love. - Yeah. - Let's hear the chorus, because I think that this is the chorus. You mentioned earlier, it doesn't have a chorus. I think this is the chorus. - Listen, it's kind of more of a refrain than a chorus. We only hear it twice. And we kind of only hear it one and a half times. The first time around, we get that full 10 bars that I was mentioning. - Right. - Six bars of attention and four bars of the release. That only happens once. And then at the end of the song, we kind of get half of that. - Half of that. Let's hear it real quick. ♪ You lost in only you ♪ ♪ Strangers angels dancing in the deepest oceans ♪ - And there's a crazy harmony in there. I don't know if you noticed it, but I'm gonna play it again. - I'll play it again. - Listen for one of our favorite words of this show in the past year. There's a tritone. - Oh, I knew it was going to try it down. There's a tritone in this harmony, which implies that it's like lydian mode, but it adds to the strangeness of this moment. Here it is. - Let's hear it. - I'll point it out as it happens. ♪ You lost in only you ♪ ♪ Strangers angels dancing in the deepest oceans ♪ - This is maniacal. - That's part of why that note feels so crazy, 'cause it is a tritone. It's literally a minor third on top of a minor third. - Like how do you go into the booth? These are all Robert, by the way. - That's all Robert. - There's no other way I'll sing on the song. Does Robert write the lyrics? - Robert is, for the most part, the almost 100% songwriter we think across much of his catalog, but we're gonna talk about that a little more in this image. - In this list, yeah. - The lyrics is on question that lyrics and melodies - But because you said that he's the through line for the band, is there anybody else who we know had a heavy hand in just talking about the catalog in general, the music of the band. - I'll be honest with you. I've read a lot of books, I've seen a lot of interviews. It's not frequently discussed what the actual literal contributions of other bandmates are. It's unclear to me where he brings a demo and where the line is between guys. Let's work this song up together and the final result. It's not always, I think a lot of it is worked up in the demo stage, but I think obviously a lot comes from, I think Boris, for example, on the song, The Drummer. contributed those iconic motifs for my understandings. And from listening to the demos. And then at the very end, we finally hear the song title. This time, no tension. Just the song title. That nice note. It's resolution. That's the only time we hear that, which is part of why I'm wondering, is that even the chorus, because we don't even hear just like heaven. The title, but I like the song that only brings up the title once. Those are some of my favorite, you know. It feels poetic. It feels special. It does. All right, luxury. Now that we heard the song, tell us how the splits break down. So Bob gets 60. I keep saying Bob. I do believe that's what they call them. Okay. Yeah, the Robert Bob Smith gets 60 percent. And that is divided lyrics, 50 music, 10, interestingly enough. And I think generously he's given Simon Boris law, Lawrence and Paul, aka, Paul are also credited with 10 percent each. Okay. So they get 10. He gets 10. The four of them get 10 each. Yeah. And Bob gets 60. I keep saying Bob. It doesn't feel right anymore. I'm going to go back to Robert because it feels more respectful. And I think that that's in part because of the actual contributions that they're making on the musical side. But I also think it's part of what keeps a band together. And Robert has talked, and we've talked a little bit early on the show about the history of getting to this lineup in the band. Yeah. Once he locked in with this lineup, he loved playing with them. Yeah. And it was so gratifying to have an actual band, especially after the early years of kind of having people come and go, that part of it is a retention strategy in my humble opinion. I think part of it is you keep a band together by being generous. Yeah. And whether or not they literally put 10 percent of just like heaven into the song, these band members did a lot for the band. Sure. Watching them live, it's what an incredible group of musicians. It's mesmerizing. So I think the splits reflect that a little bit too. I can see that. So, Diallo, what do you think the legacy of just like heaven is? Well, like I just said, I think the song, much like their catalog, has aged incredibly well. I think every generation at some point discovers a song by the cure that can resonate with them. Yeah. And encourage them to pick up an instrument and start playing music. I will say this is one of those groups that always makes me want to make more music. You know, I always feel like the cure and blondie. Hip hop and electronic music, I have a whole another canon of groups. But when it comes to specifically like guitar, driven rock, this is just one of those groups where I'm just like, yeah, it's it's so personality driven and it's so emotional and it feels so real. I just can't help but love it. So I think the legacy is that they are still making music, winning Grammys and winning fans. I completely agree with you. And I think part of they're enduring appeal. It's not just the songwriting. The songwriting is a huge part of it. But the reason why 14-year-olds today and 14-year-olds in next generation and beyond will probably find something appealing about the cure is there's a resonance. There's an emotional resonance that's baked into the songwriting. But also the visuals, the legacy, the mythology, the fact of them being canonical at this point. They're right up there with Joy Division and a Pesh mode. These are canonical bands that have meaning in a way that's baked into culture. So it's the music. It's the culture. It's the visuals. It's maybe 18 subculture and all that wonderful stuff. And this stuff trickles down. The visuals like the goth aesthetic is an aesthetic forever. It will live forever. I mean, it was it came out before the 80s. Yeah, they were literally copying people from the previous century. That's right. And that's appealing in addition to the music and as a package, it has an undeniable appeal. It's part of why I still love it to this day has almost a half century of appeal to me personally. Okay, luxury. It's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gem with you, the one song nation and with each other. Luxury, I'm going to ask you to go first and today, I think we're going to keep it with the cure. We're going to talk about cure covers, covers of cure songs that we really enjoy. So what's yours? Awesome. Well, I'm going to do the song we did today. My favorite cover of the cure is Just Like Heaven by Dinosaur Jr. Big Jay Mascus fan. I don't know that I know this version is so good. I can't wait. I'm going to play you the part and I can't wait to see your reaction. Okay. I did not see that cover up until that point. He sounded like he's like a a drum co-editor, something like that. I love Dinosaur Jr. That's the thing. I see that one coming and it ends like this just for some satisfaction. That's the end of the song. Yeah. This is on you. Oh, abruptly. Oh, I kind of like that. I love a song or a movie that ends really abruptly. You're like, oh, that's all I got. It's genuinely terrifying. I quit it ends like that. You're like, what the fuck? No catching for old men abruptly. Oh, boy. I don't remember that. Oh, my gosh. I probably drowned it out. I feel like fairs are great movie for the 80s. I don't like scary things. I don't like to be scared. What about you, Dealer? What is your cure cover? Do you sure for one more time? Well, I'm going to set some history here at the show because I'm actually going to do two more songs. What? Two more songs. It's in this moment. My cure cover is a song by the group Novel Vague. And they covered a forest in a very sort of like Basinova elevator music style. But I found it really endearing. This is Novel Vague with a forest. Tell you, don't you? I saw that acoustic guitar. It works. It's Basinova. They did a Basinova cover of a forest and it really works. It really works. The chord changes in that song in the actual song, which they just, you know, are using. Yeah. Are really, they sound native to what Basinova chord changes. I know. It might have sounded like, because that sounded really authentic. If you're into like really cool covers in a Basinova style, that Novel Vague album is a really, it's a good album. It's a good purchase. But for the first time ever, I do have one more song on top of that. And that is because being big fans of the cure and everything that they influence you and I did a song together. We haven't made many songs together, but we did do a song together. It's time to show the world. Black nerds, which was for my show, Sherman Showcase, and I was going for sort of a Robert Smith, even more so the Interpol song. Right. And this is a song produced by our man, Luxury, sung by me. This is Black Nerds. We had a lot of fun that day. That was great. That was a lot of fun. And you put a tri-tone in that song. We played a tri-tone even know what a tri-tone was at the time. And you put it in the song. You put it in there. You knew. Robert Smith will see you at Glasston Berry. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram @DialoDIA, LLO and on TikTok @DialoRiddle. And you can find me on Instagram @LUXXURY and on TikTok @LuxuryXX. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram @DialoRiddle. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok @OneSongPodcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube. Just search for One Song Podcast. We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe. And be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you made it this far, you're officially part of the One Song Nation. Show us some love. Give us five stars, leave a review, and send this episode to a fellow music fan. It really helps keep the show going. Luxury helped me in this thing. I'm producer DJ Songwriter, musicologist and KCRW DJ every Friday night from 10 p.m. till midnight. Luxury. And I'm actor writer, director, and sometimes DJ D all over me. And this is One Song. We'll see you next time. This episode is produced by Melissa Dwayne's, our video editor, is KC Simon Sin, mixing by Michael Harman and engineering by Eric Mr. Patience X. This show is the second to produce by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Wall and our friends at RP. We'll see you soon.