Everyone thinks The Cure are “goth”. Let me ‘erm actually’ that for you…

Goth is architecture. Goth is deliberate darkness, constructed grief, the aesthetic of mourning worn as armour. The Sisters of Mercy built cathedrals. Siouxsie built monuments. Fields of Nephilim built tombs. The Cure are not dark… they are unstable. Disintegration is not a goth record. It is a nervous breakdown that somehow became beautiful.

We all love lists. Here’s a list of my favourite Cure songs, in no particular order, that are defensibly NOT GOTH:

  • In Between Days: pure jangling summer pop
  • Close to Me: claustrophobic but playful, almost comedic
  • Just Like Heaven: romantic and luminous
  • Hot Hot Hot!!!: basically a dance track
  • Why Can’t I Be You?: chaotic, giddy, horn-driven absurdism
  • The Love Cats: jazz-inflected, cartoonish, genuinely silly
  • Let’s Go to Bed: deliberately lightweight pop, Smith was trolling his own fanbase
  • The Walk: synth pop, pure and simple
  • Boys Don’t Cry: new wave, not goth, almost upbeat in its heartbreak
  • Jumping Someone Else’s Train: angular post-punk with energy not dread
  • Charlotte Sometimes: eerie but literary, closer to Kate Bush than Sisters of Mercy
  • The Caterpillar: whimsical, fluttery, almost psychedelic
  • Lovesong: a straightforward love song, full stop
  • Never Enough: hard rock more than anything else
  • Pictures of You: devastating but luminous, grief rendered as beauty not darkness
  • Plainsong: my personal favourite. Soaring, sparkly, it pulls you up to heaven and then beyond

And that’s without even mentioning Friday I’m in Love, which I started hearing in grocery stores in the 2000s. Try to beat that, Bauhaus. Goth knows what it is. The Cure has no idea. A band that refused to be categorized even by their own darkness. I respect that more than I can say. Except I just said it. So maybe I don’t respect it less than I can’t say.

I have it on good authority that actual goths agree with me on this. You know who you are.

Yours in the shadows,
— Niles

currently listening to: Seventeen Seconds, side two, lights off