In yet another insightful stab at pop culture, the television show "South Park" aired an episode that posed this truly horrifying question: what would happen if Barbra Streisand came upon some secret power source that enabled her to be a many-times-exaggerated...
[more]In yet another insightful stab at pop culture, the television show "South Park" aired an episode that posed this truly horrifying question: what would happen if Barbra Streisand came upon some secret power source that enabled her to be a many-times-exaggerated version of herself? The show dubbed this bete noir super-character, bent on becoming the most formidable celebrity in the universe, "Mega-Streisand." To defeat her, the characters were forced to find a worthy opponent to the sappy, sometimes whiny, pop icon. The obvious answer: lead singer for the most wonderful New Wave band ever, Fat Bob himself, a.k.a. Robert Smith of the Cure.
Now, anyone who experienced teenage years in the '80s will feel a pang of emotion. The match is so completely right-on that it's kinda scary. For one thing, the Cure is definitely as cool as Barbra isn't. For another, the band would certainly beat her out in an "Excessive Drama" contest. Only a special breed can comfortably sing pop songs about torture (on "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me") or about being "paralyzed by the blood of Christ" (on "The Head on the Door"). And to be accurate, Mr. Smith doesn't simply sing -- he cries, he urges, he laments, and he moans.
The music supporting Smith's vocal noise has flip-flopped over the years. Sometimes we get wonderfully morose compositions such as 1980's "Seventeen Seconds" or 1982's "Pornography"; other times we hear the blatant, gooey (and damn entertaining) pop of the band's 1979 American debut "Boys Don't Cry" or 1987's "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me." Though the Cure's early sound sometimes sounds like noisy teenagers jamming in a parent's basement, the mood is almost always sufficiently self-obsessed and full of glorious angst.
Smith sings about real, intense, high-drama stuff. He reveals his predilection for the macabre by writing songs based on the poetry of Baudelaire -- the storyline of the band's "How Beautiful You Are" is obviously borrowed from the poet's "The Eyes of the Poor." Or he borrows bathos from Salinger with his song "Bananafish Bones." Elsewhere he turns existential, speaking in the voice of Mersault from Camus' "The Stranger" as he contemplates "Killing an Arab."
Searching for some empathy in this thoroughly disastrous world, what more could a forsaken teenager (or adult for that matter) need than enigmatic lyrics like, "I will lose myself tomorrow/ Crimson pain/ My heart explodes"? Smith's songwriting says what all of us disgustingly romantic and disenchanted folks would love to say: "The very first time I saw your face I thought of a song and quickly changed the tune." Somehow this helps dull the pain of living in a world that celebrates songs with relentlessly blase, fluffy lyrics such as "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world."
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