The Alternative Number Ones: The Cure’s “High”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

The meow always gets me. It's not even a meow, exactly. It's more of a pay-attention-to-me whoop. Have you ever met a particularly needy cat? I've got one of them. My family currently has way too many cats. We started fostering them during the pandemic, and there was no way my kids were ever going to be OK with the idea of not keeping those foster cats permanently. One of those cats, Birdie, is a diva type who always wants attention. She'll walk into the room and kind of screech at you until you start petting her, and then she'll bat at your hand when you stop petting her. When the Cure's Robert Smith makes the cat noise on "High," he kind of sounds like Birdie.

"High" is an aggressively silly jangle of a song, and its silliness is never more aggressive than on that meow moment. Here's the line: "When I see you kitten as a cat! Yeah, smitten as that! I can't get that small." After the "kitten as a cat" bit, Smith lets loose with that cat-yelp, as if to reassure you that yes, you did just hear him correctly, he really said "kitten as a cat." (To the best of my knowledge, "kitten as a cat" is not an expression that's ever been used anywhere other than this one Cure song.) Robert Smith had meowed on record before "High"; there's a whole lot of that on the Cure's 1983 classic "The Lovecats." But that meow moment on "High" still works as a signal: We're in Wacky Cure territory here.