(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Wed 20 August 2025 19:00, UK
Everywhere you look in The Cure’s discography, there are underrated gems.
We constantly talk about the obvious masterpieces. Disintegration, Pornography – even Songs of a Lost World. But what about the ones easily forgotten, that actually say a lot more about Robert Smith’s genius mind? Like ‘A Letter to Elise’ and ‘Jupiter Crash’. Records like Bloodflowers and even Wish are seen as the poorer works in Smith’s repertoire, but really, they’re anything but.
Then again, being a bit of an underdog has always been Smith’s thing. And he knows it, too. He knows he was never everybody’s cup of tea. And if it wasn’t the music people took issue with, it was the way he looked. Even now, people less familiar with his genius take one look at him and make their minds up, forgetting that the indie rock scene would be nothing without his sheer audacity and gothic brilliance.
But being the underdog means also recognising underappreciation in those around him. And Smith, if for nothing else, has always had an eye for the things that people don’t really talk about, or don’t talk about enough. As an example, he once discussed his favourite music during an extensive interview with Triple J. And instead of naming them and briefly covering why, he divulged some of his best and most career-defining memories. And how music, for him, has always been attached to expression, whether through ideas or the general thought processes that shape who we are.
This also means understanding the industry on a different level. Because Smith, now, is hailed as a legend. The ultimate leader of gothic new wave. Someone whose music covers everything we could never put into words. Ambiguities we often can’t even label as simply good or bad. But these are all traits he’s admired and observed in other musical greats, springboarded from elsewhere and made entirely his own.
Like The Cocteau Twins. Everybody knows this is a group whose lyrics need undivided attention to understand. But the convoluted nature of their words is what makes them great, or what makes them real. And to Smith, they deserved far more credit than they got. Them and My Bloody Valentine.
“There’s also a link in our guitar sound to the Cocteau Twins,” he told HUMO in 2000. “But it’s not plagiarism. Do you know what is strange? That I’ve had all the commercial success, while I always was a fan of great groups that remarkably never really broke through. I think My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins have some really catchy songs, but still they never had a hit, and you never hear them on the radio.”
It’s easy to see these in Smith’s own work, like how ‘A Letter To Elise’ takes some of those familiar Cocteau Twins notes and twists them to fit his style. Or how listening to a song like ‘Persephone’ is easy to imagine as Smith’s, until Elizabeth Fraser’s voice comes in and reminds you it’s not. But being underappreciated, or the underdog, is also a little bit like that, too – mimicking those spaces and taking them further. Paying homage to people who deserve to be recaptured elsewhere.
Related Topics