(Credits: Far Out / Sam Rockman)
Sun 12 October 2025 14:00, UK
Robert Smith always said that The Cure had never been defined by one particular sound, but in a lot of ways, you could never imagine him being the frontman of any other group.
There could be no other person who could embody the spirit of a slightly unhinged, gothic, effervescent but at the same time straight-laced pop star persona that Smith does – simply because no one else can understand quite how he does it. In this sense, he has always been a little bit of an enigma; the frontman whose workings can never quite be cracked and whose image cannot be defined against any existing palette.
All of this is to say that when Smith turned around and admitted that he could see himself joining the ranks of another British band, it came as a bit of a surprise, given how prolific his status as the beating heart of The Cure had become. And sure, it wasn’t like his imaginings at the forefront of other groups was a regular occurrence, but when it did happen, it meant that the outfit had a dynamic that Smith really saw a piece of himself in.
“I know I like a group when I think: ‘In that group I’d like to play for a week or so’,” he mused in an interview from 2000. “I had that recently with Supergrass. I’m sure they’re having lots of fun, and I like their freshness and spontaneity. But mostly I don’t feel related with well-known bands, because their motivation is so different.”
In fairness to Smith, this was about as good a pick of any band he could have chosen – between the youthful ebullience of ‘Alright’ to the more sinister slides of ‘Moving’, Supergrass’s discography was almost like the intoxicating protégé of a cocktail that The Cure had once finely crafted. Bridging the gap between 1970s glam, 1980s new wave, and 1990s Britpop, there were a selection of bands within this time that could take on any song and make it still sound so fresh, as if it could have been released at any point in those eras or in the future. The Cure and Supergrass were just two of them.
This is perhaps the quality that Smith recognised within the dynamic of Supergrass that he could also apply himself to. It’s not easy to replicate such a specific sound and vision within any other context, but in joining their ranks for just a week, he could at least have a taster of what music looked like through a different lens, but ultimately with the same eventual goal. Of course, that’s making the assumption that Supergrass would actually let him in – but somehow you think that they might be OK with it.
Of course, the bigger question in all of this is what exactly a supergroup of The Cure and Supergrass might look like, although that admittedly may not have been what Smith was hinting towards in his original fleeting comments. The vision is still very much an exciting one, though. Imagine two of the biggest British bands of their era coming together to create an inimitable force. It might just send certain sections of society into a tailspin.
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