The Cure

ComradeDavo · Sep 2, 2006

One of my work colleagues was playing The Cure's greatest hits in the shop yesterday, and a customer started chatting away with him about how the Cure were a pop band rather than a goth band and so forth. My work colleague is distinctly not goth, so he agreed with the pop assumption of course. So my question to you people is - are the Cure a goth band? Or a pop band? or both?

Sidhe · Sep 2, 2006

Since Goths are all Robert Smith wanna bes and he pretty much invented the whole look if not the culture I'd say it's Goth, but popular goth, not pop.

nonconformist · Sep 2, 2006

Was it the Cure that sang "Boys don't cry"?

ComradeDavo · Sep 2, 2006

nonconformist said:
Was it the Cure that sang "Boys don't cry"?

Yup. It was.

I've seen Robert smith come out and play that song with Placebo at Wembley, that was pretty awesome.

Sidhe · Sep 2, 2006

nonconformist said:
Was it the Cure that sang "Boys don't cry"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_Don't_Cry_(song)

Apparently yes.

nonconformist · Sep 2, 2006

ComradeDavo said:
Yup. It was.

I've seen Robert smith come out and play that song with Placebo at Wembley, that was pretty awesome.

Well, that doesn't sound Gothy at all. It sounds new wave.

Rambuchan · Sep 2, 2006

Are you kidding me Davo?

The Cure was one of THE archetypal Goth bands. You could even say that Robert Smith was one of the earliest Emos.

But you shouldn't overlook the tangental influence into Goth culture from people like Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper and that whole death metal, theatrical rock movement. There are other influences on the Goth movement and indeed The Cure too. From the punk world, there are bands like the Theatre of Hate. From the comics and mythic worlds, there are also the vampire genres. From philosophy, there are all the existentialists.

For sure, The Cure were a slightly softened, late 70s-early 80s, poppy version of all these influences, but their work saw all this culminating into some early sense of what it was to be a Goth.

They were definitely a Goth band more than a Pop band, in my book at least.

Raisin Bran · Sep 2, 2006

I say both.

Anyhow, I never really liked that band, my sister listened to it too much when I was younger.

RS was a pionner of the goth trend but back then they were pop with a twist of goth.

Rambuchan · Sep 2, 2006

nonconformist said:
Well, that doesn't sound Gothy at all. It sounds new wave.

Yeah, that's true. Their music was very diverse, and that's what my mates and I loved about them so much, when we were listening to them in the 80s. We were MAJOR fans of The Cure.

For the musical Goth material, I'd say look at stuff that appeared on albums like "Standing on a Beach/Staring at the Sea: The Singles", such as 'Close to Me', 'Hanging Garden', 'Forest' and I think 'Caterpillar' too. The Head on the Door was another deliciously Gothy album.

But that's the music, which was a diverse fusion of many influences. How about their appearance?

Drewcifer · Sep 2, 2006

I would say that 3 of the first 4 Cure albums were goth (Faith, 17 Seconds, and Pornography) after that they became pop. The Cure were definitely one of the early goth bands along with Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees. All the goths I knew in the mid 80s were heavily into them.

carlosMM · Sep 2, 2006

The answer MUST be they are a pop band, but they used to be THE goth band.

Drewcifer · Sep 2, 2006

Rambuchan said:
The Cure was one of THE archetypal Goth bands. You could even say that Robert Smith was one of the earliest Emos.

I think Bauhaus was the archetypal Goth band. They were the kings of Goth back in the day, at least they were over here.

sysyphus · Sep 2, 2006

The Cure are a poppy goth band, though since 1990 it's all been pop if you ask me. They started out as a punk band, soon to be a New Wave Art Punk band. Then for a brief period they were a electronic band. Then they released Love Cats and were temproarily a crap band.

Screw genre labels. The Cure are a band.

Drewcifer · Sep 2, 2006

sysyphus said:
soon to be a New Wave Art Punk band.

"There is no such thing as new wave. It's what you say when you don't want to say punk because they will kick you out of the ****ing party and they won't give you coke anymore. You've got punk, powerpop, ska, rockabilly...but new wave doesn't mean **** "

sysyphus · Sep 2, 2006

My point exactly.

Shylock · Sep 2, 2006

They are a band, and a pretty good one at that. That will suffice for me.

mrtn · Sep 2, 2006

They're a great band, I've listened to them for fifteen years. Not that I'm much into putting bands in genres, so I voted both. And that's looking at them from a musical perspective, judging a band from the singers hair style is very shallow.
If you look at a record like "Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me", you'll both find goth songs like Torture, as well as pop songs like Hey you!!.

WillJ · Sep 2, 2006

They are a distinctly Goth-infused neoclassical avant-progressive poppy post-punk band with ostrock influences.

Jawz II · Sep 2, 2006

where is the "crap" option?

ok so i guess they have 2 or 3 good songs.

Chukchi Husky · Sep 2, 2006

I never heard of them.

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