Track #27 - “Lovesong” by The Cure (1989)
From the album Disintegration
Music by Simon Gallup, Roger O’Donnell, Robert Smith, Porl Thompson, Lol Tolhurst, & Boris Williams
Lyrics by Robert Smith
Performed by:
Robert Smith – lead vocals, guitar, keyboards
Simon Gallup – bass
Porl Thompson – guitar
Roger O’Donnell - keyboards
Boris Williams – drums
US Billboard Hot 100 - #2; US Alternative Songs - #2
US Mainstream Rock - #16
Billboard Year-End Hot 100 - #68
Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again
Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am young again
Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun again
Do you remember that summer when everything was perfect, and you felt like you had everything figured out? That one summer that didn’t seem to end? For most, this will occur during high school, usually coinciding with a first job, or a summer romance, or maybe it was that first summer you and your friends were truly inseparable. I will bet memories of summers past are more vivid than what you did yesterday, and as I sit here recalling the summer of 1989, about to get all these thoughts on paper, I am somewhat more wistful about these memories than when I was writing about Christmas in our last installment. My season of realization and coming of age came when I was on the cusp of turning 19, the summer after my freshman year in college. That might make me sound like a late bloomer in some ways, but that theme has held for most of my life. At that time, with a year of college under my belt and some seniority at a part-time job that I loved and was so much more than just a gig to me, I felt like I had more confidence and freedom than I ever had. And I suddenly had more awareness and interest in the world around me. Each day my grandfather would leave the day’s newspapers on the stair landing leading to the second floor of our house, and I would do my best to read them cover to cover. The decade was coming to an end, and the world was changing. That year I would read about protests in Tiananmen Square in China, and the fall of the Berlin Wall; changes and protests led by my generation. And that summer, I made up for the summers during high school when I lacked that confidence, curiosity and freedom. It was the summer my friend Don and I got bored one night and he suggested we drive into NYC and just cruise around; and we did, top down all the way from exit 61 on the LIE to the Midtown Tunnel, the first time I had ever done something that spontaneous. It was the summer my friends and I found beaches to drink beers on after work, still not old enough to get into the bars on Long Island, and the summer I got really good at volleyball, playing on a sand court in a friend’s backyard in Holbrook. It was the summer I pierced my ear, my father looking in horror at the diamond stud, and letting me know in no uncertain terms he was not pleased. At work I was someone the new hires came to when they had questions or when they needed help telling the difference between Chuck Taylors and Airwalks. Since I had seniority, I was on the schedule a lot, which meant I always had money in my pocket. I bought Quiksilver surf clothes, new Nike Air Agassi’s, and I treated myself to a new pair of Gordon & Smith rubberized sunglasses with blue mirrored lenses. I always had money for gas, and for fast food, and despite eating terribly all summer I still managed to stay trim. I realized for the first time that the harder I worked, the more my boss and mentor, Martin, would trust and have more confidence in me, and I began to see the tremendous value in that. It was a banner summer for movies, and I saw them all: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2, Ghostbusters II, Parenthood, When Harry Met Sally, Do The Right Thing…and on June 23rd, after almost a year of hype and anticipation, I saw Batman. Before the Marvel and DC cinematic universes and Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films there was Michael Keaton as Batman, Jack Nicholson as The Joker, and Tim Burton directing what was a pop culture moment in time. And there was a soundtrack by Prince to boot. Never had I looked forward to a movie so much; I literally counted the days until I could buy my tickets in advance, and then I lined up at the theater in the morning for an afternoon show to get the best seat. I was mesmerized by it. I loved it so much I saw it four times that summer. Not since the Star Wars trilogy had I been so obsessed with a movie, except now I had my own car, money, and freedom to see it as many times as I wanted. It should go without saying that I was also filling my CD tower at home, buying cassettes for my car, and watching MTV all hours of the night. The year 1989, particularly that summer, was one of those years in music that will forever resonate with me, like 1984 or 1993. Where to begin…Madonna released “Express Yourself” and “Cherish” from her album Like A Prayer that summer, Janet Jackson put out “Miss You Much” ahead of the fall release of Rhythm Nation 1814, and Paula Abdul’s Forever Your Girl was still spawning hits that summer; even though they never made any of my mixtapes back then, there was no denying New Kids on the Block were everywhere that summer, their album Hangin’ Tough giving rise to the “boy band” and eventually selling 15 million copies; Bobby Brown’s Don’t Be Cruel from 1988 was still played heavily in 1989, and he followed it up with “On Our Own” from the Ghostbusters II soundtrack; there was the Milli Vanilli debacle, the pop duo whose album Girl You Know It’s True went #1, and had three #1 singles, only to be unmasked as impostors for not performing their own vocals. It was the summer I discovered “Buffalo Stance” by Neneh Cherry, the album 3 Feet High and Rising by De La Soul, the breezy, wonderful “Back to Life” by Soul II Soul, and the tongue-in-cheek “Bust A Move” by Young MC. Guns N’ Roses released the EP G N’ R Lies, featuring the acoustic hit “Patience”, and hair metal reached somewhat of an apex, anchored by Motley Crue’s album Dr. Feelgood, Great White’s hit “Once Bitten, Twice Shy”, and the debut by New Jersey band Skid Row, who were discovered by Jon Bon Jovi. I listened to and loved all of it. I still considered myself a diehard rock fan, but the music that summer was too good and ubiquitous to ignore; plus, I was still a year away from Depeche Mode and my alternative music renaissance. There were some huge alternative and new wave releases that year: “Pop Song ‘89” from the album Green by R.E.M., “So Alive" by Love and Rockets hit #3, Cosmic Thing by the B-52’s featuring the infectious hit “Love Shack”, and the Pixies released their iconic album Doolittle. All four would be in my collection the following year. But late that summer, I would hear a song that started out almost as a novelty for me, by a band that was hardly ever played on mainstream radio, and that I had heard only stories about. They were dark and brooding, way too alternative for my tastes back then. But this song was simple and straightforward, an ode from the singer to his longtime love, a song that ended up almost going all the way to #1. Despite all the amazing music I just mentioned, this was the song that became the most memorable for me during that unforgettable summer of 1989. I can’t even call it the soundtrack of my entire summer that year; it wasn’t released until August. But I bought the single, I played it over and over and watched the video whenever it was on MTV. I even bought the entire CD, Disintegration, and tried to listen to the remaining eleven tracks. But it took rescuing the CD from the garbage later that year though, before I became a big fan of the Cure.
By the time the Cure released Disintegration in the spring of 1989, they were already underground and college radio heroes. Mainstream success had eluded them in the US, but they had developed a devoted army of fans who knew every melancholy chord, and who could sing along with all of vocalist and songwriter Robert Smith’s despair-laden lyrics. Formed by Smith in the early 1970’s, and originally known as Easy Cure, they are often lumped in with post-punk bands Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus and Joy Division. The Cure would become pioneers of so-called “goth rock”, although Smith himself has openly said the band’s sound is not “gothic”, and that they are actually not responsible for the genre at all. After forming in Crawley, West Sussex in the UK, the Cure would go through several lineup changes before releasing their debut album Imaginary Boys, in 1979. Later that year, they would release a non-album single, “Boys Don’t Cry”. In the early 80s, Smith replaced Siouxsie and the Banshees guitarist John McKay while they were on tour, and this was when Smith began to don the familiar makeup and unkempt nest of hair he is most often associated with, to fit in on stage with the Banshees. That look would permeate the Cure when he rejoined his band. After chart success with albums Pornography and The Top in the early 80s (and more lineup changes), the Cure would release The Head on the Door in 1985, which would reach #7 in the UK, and more importantly, #59 in the US, making it a breakthrough for them across the Atlantic. Featuring two upbeat singles, “Close to You” and “In Between Days”, the album had more of a pop sound than prior albums, and the Cure began to dominate college radio in the US. They would release a compilation album, Standing on the Beach, in 1986, and re-issue previous singles “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Let’s Go to Bed”. Their lineup would also solidify around this time after years of switching out and firing members; besides mainstay Smith on vocals and guitar, Simon Gallup returned on bass after leaving for three years, guitarist Porl Thompson became a permanent member, and Lol Tolhurst and Boris Thompson would join on keyboards and drums. In 1987, they released the double album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, featuring 18 songs, including what I would argue is one of the greatest new wave songs ever recorded, “Just Like Heaven”. The album was certified platinum in the US, and the Cure cracked the Top 40 US album chart for the first time. The album received worldwide acclaim and set the stage for the follow up album Disintegration, the one that would make them international superstars.
As that summer began to wind down, and the retail “Back to School” season started, I and the rest of the store team were working long hours every day. I would sometimes work from 10AM to 10PM, the long days blurring into one another. Weary parents brought their kids in looking for the latest, and often most expensive sneakers and Champion sweatshirts we had, just so they could look cool on the first day of school. I’d watch their jaws drop when they saw the price tags, then their exasperation when they gave up and just threw their credit cards on the counter. There were days I literally could not see out into the mall because there were so many customers crowded into our relatively small retail space. There would be piles of discarded sneaker boxes behind the counter, overflowing bins full of hangers, and display shoes strewn all over the floor on any given day. There would be a lull, and we’d straighten it all out, and then it would get destroyed again. One week we received a shipment of 200 cases of merchandise, which we checked in while still helping customers on the salesfloor. We sold Air Jordans and Stan Smiths right out of the shipping boxes because we didn’t have time to put them away. Martin had pizzas on the shelves so we could just grab slices and eat without taking a break. It was chaos like I’d never seen before, worse than the holiday season the year before. The hours would disappear, and at the end of my shift I’d peel off my polyester uniform, and it would reek with sweat from running around all day. As some of the other part-time staff left one by one to head back to colleges that were out of state, those attending school locally, like myself, picked up the slack and worked seven days a week as we neared the end of August and the Labor Day holiday weekend. Around this time, Martin took a much-needed morning off. He was fried from working non-stop the past few weeks and asked our assistant manager, a meek, gangly guy named Howie to open the store; Martin said he’d be in by noon. He also asked a few of the part-time staff to come in before 10AM and help Howie open for the day. After performing some much-needed straightening up, we opened the store promptly at 10AM, and within minutes we had about a dozen customers in the store. The store buzzed for awhile, and then I began to notice that the usual sounds of Led Zeppelin, Guns N’ Roses and Pink Floyd had been replaced by Madonna, Paula Abdul and Bobby Brown; it sounded like Z100, an extremely popular Top 40 station in NYC. Did someone change the station? Some of the other guys noticed as well, and we all started giving each other looks. I don’t think that radio had been touched in over a year, the “Do Not Change This Station” sign still hanging prominently on the wall next to it. The more experienced of us knew not to touch that radio; it had to be Howie, who had only been with us a few months, and probably did not realize what a mistake he’d made. I bet the two new cashiers got to him. Now this might not sound like a big deal, changing a radio station, but all of us have our one thing and for Martin, this was it. If he had to work 12 hours a day, he wanted his music, and only his music tuned in. This was probably not going to end well. Sure enough, Martin wandered in just before noon, entering through the back door, and started chatting us up on the salesfloor during a rare time when the store traffic was at a low point. He had not caught on yet to the new tunes coming from the store speakers. To that point, I knew all the music playing that day. But then I heard a song that was completely new to me; it had a moody synthesizer, almost like an organ, and the singer was almost speaking the lyrics instead of singing them. And even though it had an up-tempo beat, it sounded sad. What was this? Then Rich, one of the guys I worked with said, “Wow, this is the new Cure song.”
Then Martin said, “The Cure? WBAB never plays the Cure.”
Uh-oh.
Martin knew something was amiss. He had finally caught on that his beloved WBAB had been tuned out.
“Did someone change the station??”, he asked.
Then Howie: “Well, the girls wanted something different, and I didn’t see the harm, seeing as we’re all working so much.”
We waited for Martin’s reaction, and for him to ask us to go back and change the radio back to where it had been for over a year, or for him to storm off and do it himself. But instead, he leaned on a clothing rack, shrugged, and said, “You know, I’m so tired, I don’t even give a shit. There are customers in here guys, let’s get to it.”
And that was the end of it. Z100 stayed tuned in until after the busy season ended, and then WBAB was back. But not before I heard that Cure song on repeat several times a day. I learned it was called “Lovesong”. Didn’t sound like a “love song” to me, but during one of my rare breaks during those last two weeks that summer, I went around the corner to Tape World and picked up the cassette single and played it over and over in my car. I saw the video on MTV, with the band sitting in a cave playing their instruments, and singer Robert Smith in black lipstick and eyeliner, staring lovingly at his wedding band as he lip-synced the lyrics. I had heard of the Cure, but as a metal and hard rock fan, I felt they were probably off-limits to me; goth and alternative fans generally did not mix with hard rock fans. Besides, the Cure was as dark and alternative as you could get, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for it. But the more I listened to “Lovesong” the more curious I became about this band, so much so that after classes started up again that fall, I bought the entire CD and tried to listen to all 12 songs. It was dark and brooding, and every song plodded along, with heavy drums and rumbling basslines, all of it punctuated with Robert Smith’s voice, almost pleading the melancholy lyrics instead of singing them. I just didn’t get it at first. So, much like Def Leppard and Hysteria only two years before, I shelved Disintegration. “Lovesong” however, was more in line with my taste at the time, and I wore out the cassette single. Then, right around November, I decided to go through my CD’s and toss out whatever I wasn’t listening to anymore, to essentially make room for more CD’s. I don’t remember what I got rid of that day, but I do remember removing Disintegration from the rack with the intention of tossing it in the garbage. There it was, on top of the pile, with Robert Smith’s face staring at me from the cover, almost daring me to throw out his band’s CD. But in the end, I couldn’t do it. Maybe I need to give this another chance, I remember thinking. So, I kept it, and over the next few months I listened to it more and more, and it grew on me. Don’t get me wrong, I still thought it was dark and brooding, but I began to appreciate it more, and I started to really love those bleak lyrics. I started going back in the Cure catalog, and discovered a lot of their older stuff had a more pop edge to it, so it was easier to listen to. But I returned to “Lovesong” often; it's a beautiful, upbeat song on an otherwise dark record. It’s crazy now to think that I almost threw the whole record out. The Cure’s “Lovesong” was a perfect punctuation on that perfect summer of 1989. There have been several more memorable summers since then; we may even go back to another one. 😊
So, here is the video for “Lovesong”. Who would think you could sing something so romantic while sitting in a cave? Enjoy!
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Next time…an R&B/pop duo from Philadelphia and their most successful single close a chapter as I start junior high school.
P.S.
“Lovesong” would end up reaching #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1989, blocked from the #1 spot by Janet Jackson’s “Miss You Much”. Robert Smith has said of his ode to his wife Mary, “It’s an open show of emotion. It’s not trying to be clever.” I did not see that quote until decades after I first heard "Lovesong”, but that’s probably why it appealed to me so much when I first heard it, and why I didn’t like Disintegration initially. I was expecting an album full of straightforward pop-like tracks like “Lovesong”, and Disintegration is definitely not a pop album. Of course, now I’m glad I gave the album another chance because eventually it found a place in my life, and it made me a fan of the Cure. Besides “Lovesong”, the album contains standout tracks “Plainsong”, “Pictures of You”, and one of the most beautiful, gloomy songs you’ll ever hear, the atmospheric, “Fascination Street”. I also highly recommend 1987’s double album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, The Head on the Door from 1985, and Wish from 1992, featuring one of their most popular tracks, the decidedly sunny “Friday I’m in Love”. Disintegration peaked at #12 on the Billboard Album chart in the US and has sold 3 million copies worldwide since its release. On Rolling Stone’s rebooted 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2020, the album placed at #116, not bad for a band who remained mostly underground for half their career.
“Lovesong” has been covered by dozens of artists, most famously by Tori Amos, Adele for her 2011 album 21, and an amazing version by alternative band 311 in 2004. They put a reggae-like, lighter spin on the song, and it really blew me away the first time I heard it, and it remains a go-to on my playlists today. My wife and I love it so much it almost ended up being our wedding song.
In 2019, the Cure was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Trent Reznor. Of the Cure, the band that would influence his own work in Nine Inch Nails, and of his discovery of college radio in the early 1980s, he said, “…and one of the most important aspects of being swept away by this tidal wave of new music was getting to hear the Cure for the first time.” It was a fitting tribute to a band that many from my generation felt belonged only to them; if the Cure became popular then they’d have to share their beloved band with the rest of the world. I wish I could say I was one of those kids who found the Cure on college radio, but I know I found them when they became popular and I’m sure their lifelong fans would say I’m a poser of sorts, and they would not be wrong. I was late to the party with a lot of those alternative and post punk bands back in the early 90s, but here’s how I look at it: when I had the opportunity to love or hate a lot of that music, I chose the former. Those bands made me feel a certain way back then, and they still do; I just stumbled on them later than most.
Hearing the Cure on Z100 back in 1989 provided a preview of the alternative boom of the early 90s, and not in the best way. Love and Rockets, formed from the remains of post-punk band Bauhaus, had a #3 hit “So Alive” which was played on mainstream radio that year, and in 1990, Depeche Mode would have their breakthrough with Violator, also a mainstream hit. Once Nirvana and the rest of the Seattle bands broke in 1992, radio stations like Z100 would totally revamp their formats in the subsequent years, focusing almost exclusively on alternative and grunge music, effectively saturating the airwaves with bands that were probably happy being out of the mainstream. Even for a devoted fan like me, I remember there were just too many bands trying to sound like Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Soundgarden, and after awhile I think people got overwhelmed, and turned their attention to hip-hop and the new metal of the late 90s. I mention this because to me it’s a perfect example of how the business of music can ruin it. They get hold of something and they just try to replicate it over and over, and in the end people just get tired of it; it takes away from the value of what some artists have truly built over the years when the music business just clones what’s popular to make money. Just my two cents, I’ll step down from my soapbox.
I would be remiss if I didn’t again mention Chris Molanphy’s amazing podcast, Hit Parade. He did a full episode in 2019 on the Cure, and how the rest of the bands from the post-punk era all broke around the same time, including New Order, Depeche Mode, and the prince of the downtrodden, Morrissey, and his band The Smiths. He also discusses the chart performance of “Lovesong”, and that of the bands just mentioned. I highly recommend checking it out here or wherever you get your podcasts. And finally, here’s a Spotify playlist from 1989. I usually limit the playlists to 20 songs, but there was so much to include I broke my own rule. All of the songs I mentioned above (yes, including Milli Vanilli and New Kids on the Block), are on there; I did take some liberties and included some tracks not technically released in the summertime, but I figured you wouldn’t mind! Hope you enjoy it. 😊
See you next time…
JS
8/22/2023