The Cure’s Robert Smith Talks Writing About Brother’s Death on New LP

Robert’s Smith’s songwriting in The Cure has lengthy centered squarely on melancholy and darkish themes. But on the band’s long-awaited upcoming album, Songs of a Lost World (Nov. 1), he takes on a little bit of real-life heartache that he mentioned impressed him to pay tribute to his late brother. In an almost two-hour interview with British journalist Matt Everitt — which might be unlocked by flipping to the album’s launch date in Roman numerals right here — Smith explains the origins of “I Can Never Say Goodbye.”

“I wrote this song a lot of different ways, until I hit on a very simple narrative of what actually happened on the night he died,” he mentioned of the music devoted to his late older brother, Richard, whereas additionally copping to the Cure’s songs at all times having an fringe of the “fear of morality” in them. “It went all around the houses and I went everywhere with this song to sum up how I felt. In the end, it turned into a reasonably bleak little vignette.”

The singer mentioned he struggled to stability the “outpouring” of emotion he felt on the time with the necessity to write a coherent music, admitting that some earlier variations of the tune have been “too overwrought” for common consumption. For the file, he beloved them, however different individuals instructed they evening be “too much.” In truth, when Smith, 65, carried out “Goodbye” stay on the Cure’s 2023 tour, he mentioned he had hassle not going excessive and being overcome by emotion in live performance.

Smith continued, “I wrote the song about it, and the music itself was what I wanted to breathe. I didn’t want the words to dominate the song, in a way that the music can become a backdrop to what you’re singing. In this, I think the music is more important than what I’m singing in a way. It’s a very difficult song to sing. People say ‘cathartic’ too much, but it was. It allowed me to deal with it, and I think it’s helped me enormously.”

Realizing he hasn’t received “that many more albums” in his future, Smith mentioned he needed his new songs to “mean something,” versus some older Cure songs he mentioned weren’t as private. “On this album they all matter [to me],” he mentioned of songs comparable to “I Can Never Say Goodbye,” which finds him singing, “Something wicked this way comes/ To steal away my brother’s life/ Something wicked this way comes/ I could never say goodbye.”

“When you’re younger, you romanticize [death], even without knowing it. Then it starts happening to your immediate family and friends and suddenly it’s a different thing. It’s something that I struggled with lyrically: how to put this into the songs? I feel like I am different person than I was when we last made an album. I wanted that to come through.”

Songs of a Lost World is the Cure’s long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s 4:13 Dream; to this point the group has previewed the LP with the songs “A Fragile Thing,” in addition to “Alone.”