I'd never listened to The Cure on purpose before, but for 12 months, give or take, I'd listen to my The Cure's Greatest Hits CD front to back, then start over when it was done. And then, at some point in my freshman year in college, I just stopped, and all of these songs went back into regular rotation, more or less.
The only real reason for this, as far as I can tell, is that in 2004, The Cure released an eponymous album, and the first single from it, "The End of the World," got pretty heavy play during the waning days of the greatest alt-rock station in Philadelphia or any other city, Y100. And mere months before that, 311 released a sleepy cover of "Lovesong." So when interest in the cover piqued interest in the original, and The Cure put out a new single shortly thereafter, the back catalog got a lot of time on the air.
So I went and bought a couple used CDs, and while I never started wearing makeup or really freaking out to other people, I just listened to them a lot. It wasn't so much "Oh my God, this is awesome!" which is my normal response to discovering music I like, so much as "This is cool. I like this. I'll listen to it over and over."
Which makes sense, because The Cure was at an evolutionary inflection point that led to a lot of the pop punk and emo that I was listening to at the time, and similarly related to the new wave and post-punk that I got into later on, which I feel like is a normal part of growing as a music fan. You get into AFI and Brand New and Senses Fail, then check out what came before, and go from that (The Cure in this case) to Editors and Interpol and Bloc Party on one end and Talking Heads and Depeche Mode on the other.
Which is why I think "Close to Me" is my favorite The Cure song. It's a little more new wave-y, more Talking Heads-sounding than the rest of their stuff, which is a minor consolation for Talking Heads probably being my favorite band that didn't manage to get a song on the top 100 list.
So on reflection, my torrid but short-lived fascination with The Cure makes perfect sense after all. It's how we discover music.
The only real reason for this, as far as I can tell, is that in 2004, The Cure released an eponymous album, and the first single from it, "The End of the World," got pretty heavy play during the waning days of the greatest alt-rock station in Philadelphia or any other city, Y100. And mere months before that, 311 released a sleepy cover of "Lovesong." So when interest in the cover piqued interest in the original, and The Cure put out a new single shortly thereafter, the back catalog got a lot of time on the air.
So I went and bought a couple used CDs, and while I never started wearing makeup or really freaking out to other people, I just listened to them a lot. It wasn't so much "Oh my God, this is awesome!" which is my normal response to discovering music I like, so much as "This is cool. I like this. I'll listen to it over and over."
Which makes sense, because The Cure was at an evolutionary inflection point that led to a lot of the pop punk and emo that I was listening to at the time, and similarly related to the new wave and post-punk that I got into later on, which I feel like is a normal part of growing as a music fan. You get into AFI and Brand New and Senses Fail, then check out what came before, and go from that (The Cure in this case) to Editors and Interpol and Bloc Party on one end and Talking Heads and Depeche Mode on the other.
Which is why I think "Close to Me" is my favorite The Cure song. It's a little more new wave-y, more Talking Heads-sounding than the rest of their stuff, which is a minor consolation for Talking Heads probably being my favorite band that didn't manage to get a song on the top 100 list.
So on reflection, my torrid but short-lived fascination with The Cure makes perfect sense after all. It's how we discover music.
