EW recently set up an interview between Petey and “his idol” Robert, which understandably reads like an extended ass-kiss from Wentz to Smith (that’s how we’d do it, too). But even if you don’t buy the premise, the bit’s not bad; Pete’s an able journalist, if only ’cause he got Robert to talk about that Mecha Streisand South Park clip:
WENTZ: I was watching South Park maybe a year or two ago, and I remember thinking, That might actually be Robert Smith’s voice! But I wasn’t sure. I thought it was amazing, because these are two things that I really love, but I remember thinking, This is an arena that I would never see Robert Smith in. That was you, right?SMITH: Yeah. It’s weird because I had only seen a couple of the early South Parks. [Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone] sent me a couple of episodes on video and I pissed myself laughing. I stayed up all night and went into this radio station and recorded my words down a phone line. I had no idea what it was all about. I had one of them on the other end of the line directing me, saying, ”Please sound more like Robert Smith. Come on!” About six months later I saw it and I was completely thrown by what they had done with it. It was great. When I’m walking off and Stan’s saying, ”Disintegration is the best album ever,” it’s one of my greatest moments in life.
Cue in at 5:15 to see Robert save the world.
Watch him talk about the appearance here. Better still, P. Wentz gets Robert going about Wild Mood Swings and “Mint Car,” our vote for most underrated Cure tune.
WENTZ: You’ve had giant pop hits and these cult favorites. Did it bother you at times when certain songs would be gigantic?SMITH: We had such an awful long time to get well known. [When] it happened, though, I found it very uncomfortable. For a long time, I didn’t like certain songs because I thought, ”You’re to blame, you bastard. You made me popular.”
WENTZ: Like ”Friday I’m in Love”?
SMITH: Yes, that’s a perfect example. We did an album in ’96 [Wild Mood Swings] and we had a song on there called ”Mint Car” ? it was the single, and I thought it was a better song than ”Friday.” But it did absolutely nothing because we weren’t the band at that time. The zeitgeist wasn’t right. It taught me that sometimes there’s a tipping point, and if you’re the band, you’re the band, even if you don’t want to be, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
What’s your vote for underappreciated Cure song? Either way, Pete should fuck Fall Out Boy and just kiss rock star ass all day! He’s almost tolerable this way.
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favorite cure songs:
Maybe Someday and High
My vote for most underappreciated is “cut” off of the Wish album. Such a fucking great song. Awesome guitar work by Porl, great lyrics. I’m really hoping they’ll start playing it live again now that Porl’s back in the band.
The album “Wish” is severely underrated. It has loads of good songs.
The Cure are my favorite band! Ever… I still believe Disintegration to be the most underrated album of theirs. It never shows up on “Best Of” lists and is criminally ignored by rock critics in general.
Also, Fall Out Boy really really sucks. How come that jackass gets to be in the presence of greatness?
My vote for most underappreciated is “cut” off of the Wish album. Such a fucking great song. Awesome guitar work by Porl, great lyrics. I’m really hoping they’ll start playing it live again now that Porl’s back in the band.
I like that Pete Wentz can’t be bothered or is too stupid to watch the credits where it says “Robert Smith as Himself”.
I don’t know about most underrated, but my favorite Cure song is “Love Cats”. It’s possibly the most random thing ever, and so damn catchy.
Definitely has to be the live version of “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea” off the Show disc. Intense and raw, it’s what turned me on the greatness of the cure.
Things like this make me wonder…did a song like “Mint Car” not make it big because they weren’t the band at the time, or because it wasn’t pushed hard enough by their label. I remember when that album came out and it didn’t seem like the label pushed it. In my experience though, if you let the average listener hear “Mint Car” a few times, they love it. Such a phenomenal song.
Definitely has to be the live version of “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea” off the Show disc. Intense and raw, it’s what turned me on the greatness of the cure.
Wish is, I concur, a very underrated disc. Show is also one of my favorite live albums. In fact, I should give it another spin right now.
Pete Wentz is a douche bag…robert smith is alright
“Six Different Ways” or “Push” from Head on the Door. I think ten years ago they weren’t underrated . . . but is anything the Cure does anymore not “cultish”?
i’ve always felt that ‘Mint Car’ was robbed of it’s value by ‘The 13th’. Once the general public, and even some Cure fans heard ‘The 13th’, they wrote off the rest of the album as crap, which is half true. ‘Jupiter Crash’ was the highlight of that disc for me. it made up for songs like ‘Club America’ and ‘Round & Round & Round’, which were hard to stomach.
The entire Bloodflowers ablum is severely underrated too. It’s almost criminal that that disc wasn’t a bigger success. Then again, wtf do i know. i never “grew out” of “that stage”.
THE CURE FOR LIFE! WOOT!
with all this talk about WMS, I have to give a shout-out to “Want.” A live version from the Dream Tour popped up on my iTunes shuffle play yesterday and I cranked it up. What a fucking great song. Seems like the Cure always put amazing songs as the lead-off track to their albums. Songs with epic build-ups. Speaking of, I have to mention “The Kiss” as an underrated song. The live version on the Trilogy DVDs is kickass.
Here’s to the Cure doing multiple NYC shows in ’07. (please?)
Mint Car? ^@#$@ that was a crap song. I had blocked the whole Wild Mood Swings fiasco out of my mind until today. Thanks ‘gum, thanks a lot.
Hard to overrate any Disintegration or Kiss Me era stuff, although the back half of Wish gets a bit muddled for my tastes. Closedown has always been one of my favorites, but there’s not much to it. I’d go back to Three Imaginary Boys to find some songs that tend to get overlooked. Another Day? Fire in Cairo? Three Imaginary Boys? Boys Don’t Cry gets knocked for being mixtape fodder, but this is simple stuff, elegant in places, playful in a way that presages the stylistic mutations of Head on the Door and beyond. The Cure might not have been at the forefront of the punk (or post-punk, or whatever they’re calling it now) movement of the late 1970s, and they tend not to get name-checked unless it’s for something synth-y and gothic, but they were making some great music before Robert Smith discovered heroin and lipstick and became Robert Smith.
It’s hard to say if “Push” on “The Head on the Door” qualifies as overlooked, but certainly I’d say it’s one of the best songs they ever recorded.
I second that vote for “Push” off Head on the Door. I always casually enjoyed the Cure over the years, but when I picked up a used copy of Head on the Door and heard “Push” for the first time, I just kept backing it up and playing it over and over.
As an album, I think Bloodflowers in underrated.
I third the mention of “Push” – that should have been a big single! Love that riff…
“The Exploding Boy” + “A Few Hours After This”.
“Mint Car” is a great effing pop song. It’s actually the song that got me into the Cure. And I have to agree with whoever said above that “Disintegration” is criminally excluded from Best Of album lists. It’s like one of those enormous tapestries in the museum. Just a huge, hulking, mammoth, awesome album. “Pornography” people can slam a cock.
“This Twilight Garden”…or “Play for Today”…or “A Foolish Arrangement”…or like Porl vs. said “The Exploding Boy”
Exploding Boy
Hot Hot Hot
Play For Today
I have no favorite Cure song, I love all of them. I think my favorite lately is “Strange Attraction” for some reason. It’s wistful and romantic and why I love Robert Smith.
I’m not talking about that other person.
Both The Head on the Door and Bloodflowers are amazing and don’t get nearly enough credit.
Some of their best songs are B-sides though that most people have never heard. The Exloding Boy, A Few Hours After This, A Chain of Flowers.
Even the B-sides to their “hit” singles were better than the singles themselves I feel. Friday I’m in Love’s b-side Halo, and Mint Car’s b-side A Pink Dream are two incredible songs that were just passed over.
Pete Wentz interviews Robert Smith?!?!
Your day’s about to get worse:
Think about 311′s cover of “Love Song”!
Ah!
p.s. Blooflowers IS great.
Can we date Scott?? Ha ha I am so with you on those b-sides. Halo is an amazing song. Same with Chain of Flowers and Breathe. I always found Head on the Door to be their best album but everyone goes for Disintergration. The best song on Wish for me is To Wish Impossible Things … very haunting.
The Cure have always had really great b-sides. B-sides that are better than many bands’ singles. Jesus, they put out a whole limited edition EP of “b” material with Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me that was wonderful and hard to get a hold of before digital music became common. (It’s included in the Join the Dots box set) I use the “Oh yeah? How good are your b-sides/’throwaway material’?” standard when judging bands to this day.
Head on the Door is such a good album. I think Seventeen Seconds is my favorite though. I love “M”.
Also, tons of Cure songs seem to be about going down (“Mint Car” being one of them).
It’s always a delight to read an interview with Robert Smith. He’s witty, intelligent, fairly private, and not afraid to be bitchy. If he were less shy I’d want him to have a music chat show.
Yes, I was a huge Cure dork in high school.
Voting “Waking Hour” for best underrated Cure song… such a badass bassline.
Whoa, wait a minute. What about The Cure pre- Head on the Door? Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography- Amazing Stuff. Songs like 100 years, A Strange Day, Short Term Effect,All Cats are Grey, you have to admit The Cure was amazing far before they hit the Disintegration/Kiss Me years. Still, my favorite song has to be “Untitled” I actually walked down the aisle to it at my wedding. Of course, I may have a slight bias since I love The Cure. Hope they make it out to SoCal in ’07.
Ah! No one mentioned a Forest. Or Charlotte Sometimes. That era is when I loved the Cure the bestest. Friday I’m in Love hurts me ears.
“Fountainhead”, “Faith”, “All Cats are Grey”, “Primary”
i’m with the pre “head on the door” faction. “the top” has so much good stuff…my favorite is “birdmad girl”
i’m with the pre “head on the door” faction. “the top” has so much good stuff…my favorite is “birdmad girl”
The “trilogy” of Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography is an amazing listen if you go through all three in succession. But that wasn’t when The Cure was “the band” as he puts it. They were “it” from KMKMKM, through Disintegration and Wish.
But all of those albums are good in the right place and right time.
hmmm. big difference between fave cure song and most underrated cure song, methinks.
most underrated … i’d probably have to agree with the entire bloodflowers album. during its time, disintegration (which really IS the best album ever) received many critical accolades and praise, so i can’t rightly say it was underrated. but as the cure’s fanbase started to erode, their albums of the past 15 years or so weren’t given the credit they deserve. wild mood swings was largely ignored by the press — perhaps rightly so, as it’s a bit erratic — but bloodflowers is fab. the younger sibling of pornography and disintegration, for sure. and yet, it didn’t get the same sort of recognition.
fave cure song? god, where to start … three imaginary boys, all cats are grey, play for today, 10.15 saturday night, killing an arab, a night like this, the kiss, a forest, 100 years, plainsong (currently enjoying newfound fame thanks to marie antoinette), disintegration, fascination street, the edge of the deep green sea, it used to be me, want … that ought to do for a ‘top 15′ — i can’t narrow it down any further!
“Charlotte Sometimes” is most underrated to me, but my fave Cure song is “Just like Heaven”.
Me love Robert Smith.
Why is Fall Out Boy featured in every G-danged issue of Rolling Stone? I don’t get it at all.
Bloodflowers? = Yawn
Disintegration and earlier = Big Boner
ive been a cure fanatic for the last 17 years but robert smith has been fucking irking me. and the last two albums have been absolute SHIT (bloodflowers was a joke. lyrically smith has lost it. he can’t jusy rhyme “old” with “cold” anymore and expect me to care).
and kissing a fall out boys ass makes me want to beat the shit out of everyone.
you touched a nerve here.
underrated cure songs? if everybody knew how amazing their late b-sides are.
my fave cure albums: the top, head on the door, kiss me x3, and wish.
I am particular to early stuff – “Grinding Halt” and “Object” are my two fave underappreciated rockers.
I’m biased cause I like all The Cure songs, b-sides included, with 2 exceptions: “World War” and that terrible cover of “Foxy Lady”.
But I’m gonna vote for “Icing Sugar” here, simply because I think that Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and The Top are the 2 most underrated albums, even among fans, and a bunch of people already picked songs from The Top.
I’m biased cause I like all The Cure songs, b-sides included, with 2 exceptions: “World War” and that terrible cover of “Foxy Lady”.
But I’m gonna vote for “Icing Sugar” here, simply because I think that Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and The Top are the 2 most underrated albums, even among fans, and a bunch of people already picked songs from The Top.
Great discussion. Good to see so many cure fans read Stereogum like me.
Someone mentioned a KMx3 era limited-edition b-sides release??? I’ve never heard of that. Are you thinking about Lost Wishes?
While we’re talking about b-sides, I have to mention the b-sides for the self-titled 2004 album. By far their worst album in my opinion, but the b-sides that are out there are great, and allegedly there are a few more awesome ones that haven’t been released. If Ross Robinson hadn’t of been around, we might have gotten a great album with the right tracklisting.
thatonegirl, you walked down the ailse at your wedding to “Untitled”???? “Never dream of you again”??? That has to be the saddest song of all time!
How is “plainsong” used in Marie Antoinette?
I gotta go with “Harold and Joe” as my underrated Cure b-side.
i still cant get over the song “jupiter crash”
no question: a few hours after this
Most Underrated
Songs:
To The Sky
The Exploding Boy
All Cats Are Grey
Just One Kiss
Six Different Ways
Albums:
Pornography, Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Head on the Door
Umm. The Cure sucks hard hard hard. Wow you fanboys do too.
Umm… The Cure sucks hard hard hard. Wow you fanboys do too.
Underrated earlyish Cure: “The Exploding Boy”
Underrated late-ish Cure: “The 13th”
all of u that said something bad about Pete Wentz or said that Fall Out Boy sux, u r all wrong. Pete has done a few things that were kinda bab and u might not like him for that but he is a great artist. oh and FYI- he does so mant things that he almost killed himself. Thank god he didnt because id b lost without him. So i would like it if u kept the swearing and rude remarks to yourself and leave poor petey alone. Oh… and if your friend was getting beat up, i bet all you guys wouldnt even make an attempt to help him. So before you start making these coments on Pete Wentz and Fall Out Boy, learn the facts. (dont try to cuss me out cuz u have no idea how old I am and if im a girl or a boy and u hav no idea wut ill do if you call me one name.)
i just noticed something, the last comment was from 06 which means people dont even come to this sight. probably cuz EVERYONE LOVES FALL OUT BOY. they dont want to hear all the things you say about people who are cool and famous.
yo like i just went 2 a fob concert on saterday in Hartford and pete wentz took his shirt off!!!!!!! OMG… total orgazime hot. lol and like people in my school like to be total ass holes and say that fob and pete wentz are total fuck-ups
ok, I’ll give it to you album by album starting from Seventeen Seconds: At Night (I kind of like the live version from the Wish tour). Faith: Doubt (dig the english aggression man!). Pornography: Siamese Twins or Cold (my favs are A Strange Day & The Figurehead, but you said underrated, so that’s what I f**king gave you!). Japanese Whispers: Whole Damn Album (I mean it dude!). The Top: Shake Dog Shake or The Wailing Wall. The Head On The Door: The Baby Screams. Standing on a Beach: Stop Dead (I know, I know…but It’s the first place I heard it). Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me: The Perfect Girl or Snakepit. Disintegration: Closedown or Prayers for Rain. Wish: From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea. Wild Mood Swings: Want or Jupiter Crash.
After 4 concerts and much memorabilia, I reached Cure burn-out for a while. In 2004, I reaquainted myself with the music when I bought Join the Dots and Trilogy. They’re just as amazing as the day I heard The Love Cats in ’85 (the first Cure song I ever heard).
Other songs I would consider underrated are: New Day, Burn, A Japanese Dream, The Funeral Party, and Sugar Girl.
I agree that “Mint Car” is a severely underrated song. Friends that I play it for, that were Cure fans even at the time, don’t even remember it. It’s truly a great song.
My favorite though, for ever more, is “Edge of the Deep Green See,” just an amazing song, studio, live, or humming it on the way to work….
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language ;)
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
best song never before heard after listening for 20 years:
a foolish arrangement