One Song - The Cure's "Just Like Heaven"

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

Is “Just Like Heaven” The Cure’s pop masterpiece? Diallo Riddle and LUXXURY dive into the 1987 crossover hit, unpacking what makes it the purest distillation of The Cure’s sound while tracing the band’s blend of goth atmosphere and euphoric pop across their discography. Set yourself up for financial success in 2026 with Monarch. The all-in-one tool that makes proactive money management simple, all year long. Use code ONESONG at monarch.com for 50% off your first year. Songs Discussed: “Just Like Heaven” - The Cure “Hot n Cold” - Katy Perry “Believe” - Cher “I’m Like a Bird” - Nelly Furtado “All Star” - Smash Mouth “Irreplaceable” - Beyoncé “Closing Time” - Semisonic “Alone” - The Cure “Lovesong” - The Cure “Friday, I’m In Love” - The Cure “High” - The Cure “Let’s Go To Bed” - The Cure “A Forest” - The Cure “Spellbound” - Siouxsie and the Banshees “Release The Bats” - The Birthday Party “Eighties” - Killing Joke “One Hundred Years” - The Cure “The Lovecats” - The Cats “The Walk” - The Cure “Shake Dog Shake” - The Cure “Fascination Street” - The Cure “In the Air Tonight” - Phil Collins “The End” - The Beatles “Close To Me” - The Cure “Hot Hot Hot!!!” - The Cure “Why Can’t I Be You?” - The Cure “Bandages” - Hot Hot Heat “In Between Days” - The Cure “The Blood” - The Cure “Another Girl Another Planet” - The Only Ones “Just Like Heaven” - Dinosaur Jr. “A Forest” - Nouvelle Vague One Song Spotify Playlist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick. The one that makes me scream, she said. The one that makes me laugh, she said, through her arms around my name. It's your heart and your code, your yes and your no, you're in your dog. Hey! You believe in life after love. Leaving life that to love.

Because I only fly away. I don't know where my soul is. I don't know where my home is. Somebody once told me the world is the sharpest tool in the shell. You must not know about me. You must not know about me. I can have another you in a minute. Matter of fact, he'll be here in a minute.

Shake it up. I know who I want to take me home. I know who I want to take me. Just like heaven. So luxury today, we're talking about a song from one of the biggest and most prolific bands ever. They've been around for 50 years and they've influenced everyone from Olivia Rodriguez to Interpol to The Smashing Pumpkins. That's right, Diallo. And today's song is the one that broke them into the American mainstream.

It's pure euphoria, chiming guitars, driving drums, a build so satisfying you almost don't realize how meticulously it is constructed. And hot take, we're going to ask the question, is this band the seminal goth band or not a goth band at all? We're talking one song and that song is just like heaven by The Cure. Show me, show me how you do that. Hey, one song listeners, if you love our show, you should check out Trappital, the podcast where technology meets culture. Each episode, Tropital hosts and founder, Dan Runcie, digs into the strategy behind the media and technology that drives our attention.

You'll hear Trappital explore topics like YouTube's growing influence in music and entertainment, the never-ending saga about TikTok's future, and how AI is shaping the future. Media is one of the first industries to get disrupted by new tech. It's Trappital's job to keep you ahead of the latest trends. You can listen to Trappital wherever you get your podcast. That's Trappital, T-R-A-P-I-T-A-L. So good. It's a good song, you know? That's not how he talks at all. Hey, it's my Robert Smith from the Q. Where you want to go, mate? Blimey. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes goth, Diora Riddell.

And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, musicologist, and always got luxury, aka the guy who whispers, interpolation. And this is one song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before, and you can watch one song on YouTube while you're there, please like and subscribe. So today we're talking about The Cure, and I got to say, what I love about this band is they're not afraid to evolve and keep making music. They just picked up their first ever Grammy's best alternative music. music album and best alternative music performance for the song alone. Let's hear a little snippet of Alone. I mean, that song could have gone on after Fascination Street. They have

missed a beat. They have a, they have a sound. They have, they definitely have a sound. We're going to talk about what that sound is try to break it down a little bit. He still sounds like Robert Smith. He still sounds like I guess it helps to always sing like a 60 year old British man. Because he sounds the same. He absolutely does. It's a luxury. I consider myself a cure fan, but you're a next level cure fan. What does this band mean to you? I think they're the band, that I listen to the most in my life. I think they're the band that after all of these years, like discovering them as a teen.

And like, by the way, when I discovered them as a teen, they were the favorite band of so many of the cool kids at my school. Like Maggie Nelson, it was her favorite band, and Louisa Smith. And importantly, Heather Barrett, who famously in our circle of friends, her phone number was 5-6-3 Cure. The cure were very...

We were a stalker. Is that how you remember her number? I mean, it's an impossible number to forget. 5-6-3 cure. That's pretty good. It also sounds like a song that could be written by The Cure. So they were really important to me in high school and even middle school, as they are for so many people. I think they sort of perennially pick up a new generation of teenagers who can relate and identify with whatever the sound and the goth step will be talking about in a few minutes. But that's never left me.

And I probably turn to a Cure record. I play them on my radio show. I'm listening to thinking about talking about the Cure kind of my whole life. I don't think. And I can't think of a band that's second to that. As much as I love The Beatles or Zeppelin or whatever, The Cure may be in my number one band. I think there's an age that you hit in your teenage years where a band can help kind of define who you identify as. And I think that's, for me, I think it was like the native tongues crew.

I wanted to be in a tribe called Quest or diggible planets and those kind of groups. It sounds like you were like, these guys are like who I want to be. I'll bet you it's a similar thing too where you can identify with, I mean, a huge part of it is the music. Yeah. But there's also something about who the people making. the music are. And there's also something about the other people listening to that music. And I identified with all three, I can tick all three of those boxes with The Cure, and I'll bet you can too. I'll just say one more thing about my middle school experience, my first ever concert

experience, besides seeing the Manhattan transfer being dragged by my dad when I was like 10, literally the one I wanted to go to that I went to was the cure. And that was this amazing epiphany for me when I realized, when I got to the Greek theater in Berkeley for the head on the door tour, And I saw all these other like seventh and eighth graders and older who were like looked like the outcasts in their school. It looked like you got the two to three kids from every school who kind of looked like that who were like the early God, the wearing the black. Yes. You know, with the black fingernails and whatever else and all the Robert Smith visualisms. That was the first time I was like, oh, all of these people exist in the world in other schools and other cities and other towns.

Let me tell you. Before the internet kids, you could definitely feel isolated. You could feel absolutely alone. Whether it was the record store or a Cure concert, when you thought you found your community, that was a big deal. That became my tribe, and I don't think that's ever left me. And I think that's true for a lot of people with this band. 100%. What about you, Tiala?

How did you first get into the cure? They popped up on my radio. It was one of those songs, I was like, maybe the second or third time. I used to do my homework with the radio playing. I think it was 99X was the station in Atlanta. And I remember maybe the second or third time I heard love song. I was like, I really like this. the song. And here's what's interesting. I think you're saying you fell in love with the cure because

you got to see them and you got to see this community around them. For the longest time, I didn't know what the cure even looked like. Oh, really? Like I think it's so funny, like, growing up in a all-black environment in Atlanta where we had famously like two non-black kids in my school, I didn't know there was a goth culture. I didn't know there was a whole culture that went with the music. I just appreciated the music. And I came to the cure, I think kind of what you would consider the pop era. Like, I remember liking songs like Love Song. Friday, I'm in Love.

And hi on the radio and in Atlanta on MTV. Let's check out a clip from the music video, Hi, which is one of my favorites. It's a sunny day in L.A. today. And I got to say, anytime it's sunny and I feel well-rested, this is the song that plays for free in my head. This is high. This try as I might. By the way, that video looks like them in a tree. you know, like physically high

at a beautiful world. Videos used to be so much more literal back in the day. Literally, like he says, see you in a beautiful world! You know, like it's just one of those songs Flash to beautiful. Yeah, and flashed to cloudless skies, blue skies. If it weren't for songs like these, I might not have even gotten into the cure.

But these are songs that broke through in the mainstream, at least in Atlanta. These are songs that got me to go back and discover their earlier stuff. But I wonder, luxury, as a longtime fan of the band, How did you feel about this period? And this album, Wish, which is one of my favorites. Honestly, Wish was a little bit, they had already lost me a little bit with the album we're talking about today.

Kiss me, Kiss me, Kiss me, Kiss Me. Kiss me, Kiss me is a divisive album, I feel like, in The Cure fandom. It's a great record. It's also very long. And it has a lot of songs that had they left them out, I might not have had a problem with it. But there's a shark jumping moment or two on this record. Wow. So you're referring to specifically the 1992.

record wish, right? And prior to that, we had disintegration. And prior to that, which is another perfect album. And what we're going to talk about today is this cure, 50 years. There's a lot of music. There's a duration of this band means that there's a lot of different sonic directions they take from one record to the next, one song to the next on the record. But to your question, I think in 1987, it felt like the end, sort of it's a book ending for me, a little bit of the band, and I would extend it to disintegration. That's, that is prime cure for me. That's the cure that I go back to when I say, I keep going going back to it. After that, they really double down on these beautiful more pop songs that take

into account some of the curisms that we'll be talking about, some of the sound qualities, some of the rhythmic qualities, but they lose a little bit of the darkness, sometimes a little bit more that I'd like. You know, no, no, I would say that's a record that has some of it. That's the bookend right there. On Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, they sort of allude to what's going to come next with like more songs that are like beautiful. I don't have any problem with them. It's just not what I want from The Cure. This kind of reminds me of our Depeche Mode double episode

because I think you are more of a fan of like the earliest Depeche Mode. I'm more of a fan of the sort of like violator Depeche Mode. And there's no doubt that we become fans of band when we get into them. Yes. And also I think that yes, because I got into Blur late and went back and discovered earlier Blur albums. I think at the end of the day, we are fans of Depeche Mode. We are fans of The Cure.

And I'm sure that there's some songs on Wish that you like. And there are definitely some songs on their earlier albums that I love. And we're going to get into some of those as well. And there's a lot of ways to be a fan. And, you know, sometimes being a fan means you're so locked in something meant so much to you in the early work. That when the band naturally evolves, and in this case, the band. When they leave the cavern and start, you know, signing to Deca. Robert Smith didn't just want to make a forest over and over again.

I would have loved that band. I would have gone back. But there's something natural about evolving. But sometimes a fan like me is like, but I like, These 10 years. Do you remember the first time you heard Just Like Heaven? It was very likely on 120 minutes, which I watched religiously on MTV every Sunday night. I think before or after the Young Ones, I can't remember the sequence.

But I watched that whole block of time. That was me. I was locked in every Sunday night. So it's likely I would have seen it there. Why don't we play a little bit of the Just Like Heaven music video? We're not a God band. Come on. They look like it with the God's school.

I like the stripped-down 80s music video. There's very little set dress there. It's pretty much on a white psych, you know, that they throw a nice blue gel on. It's just a performance. It's like a cactus, I think, over here in the corner or something like that. It's just a performance video, and you see all of them as their instrumental parts come in,

which is very satisfying because what you're seeing is what you're hearing. Sometimes that's all you really need in the video. I hope I'm not jumping the gun, but has the lineup of the cure basically stayed the same? We know that Robert Smith's been there the whole time. Let me just give you the really quick rundown. 14 studio LPs that this band has made. The first one, three imaginary boys, was the three imaginary boys were Robert Smith, Lawrence, Loll, Tallhurst, British accent, Lull, probably.

And Michael Dempsey was the first bass player. Okay. That record is amazing. It's sort of standalone. It's a little bit more post-punk, a little more buzz cocky. It hasn't quite got the goth stuff in there yet. The next three records are really the goth core of the band. and that's 17 seconds faith and pornography.

And those lineups had a replacement, very important one, where the bass player was replaced by Simon Gallup, who then is seminal to the band. Yeah. In a lot of ways, we're going to talk about it. Because I hear the bass of these songs. And today, listen, we're talking about just like Kevin, it's important to point out by the time this song came out,

there had already been, as you said, they'd already been around for a decade. There had already been six albums under their belt. And these earlier albums, we're going to talk about them. They were darker. They were of a goth, I'd say, new. wave. I'd even argue sort of a punk, pospunk edge.

Oh yeah, the sound evolved. So this core period of like where I think the gothness really hardens because of the sound and because of the look really. And because of some of the curisms we'll be talking about today get established on a lot of these records. There's a moment from 82 to 84 after the record

pornography where Robert Smith's kind of in the wild a little bit. He's going through a lot, drinking a lot, drugging a lot. He's had a fight with Gallup, Simon Gallup, who's no longer part of the, it's just the two of them again. And almost as a rebellion against this goth period. This is when you start to get Robert Smith and the Cure coming up with songs like, let's go to bed. The Love Cats, the Walk, which is one of, I think, our shared

favorites. And what's important about this, though, is that not only has the lineup shrunken, but this is when Robert Smith starts to realize, hey, I can have more fun with this. We're going to talk about this a little more when we get into the goth stuff. But the pop music, it's important to remember really starts in 82, like in Let's Go to Bed, which is intentionally meant to be like an anti-Goth song. He's like, I'm no longer, I'm no longer doing this sound exclusively anymore. I'm going to be doing what I want to do, and I'm going to be exploratory in pop music and try to come up with new, find new sounds and new melodies that are more along the pop lines. Well, let's hear a song from one of their early albums. This is from their second album.

This is a song called, one of our joint favorites. This is probably my favorite cure song. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Even though I said just like Kevin. You don't think it's the best. You just think it's your personal favorite. See, this is going to be the show today.

This is going to be the show today. It is my favorite. It's his favorite. He doesn't think it's the best. He does not think this is the best. I am not going to be consistent. But it's his favorite. And I reserve the right to be inconsistent today.

This is a favorite known as a forest. Let's make the listening audience guess what's happening in the video. Yes. Can you guess what's happening in a forest? Would you, if you say a worm's eye of view, some very tall trees, then you are correct. And then Robert Smith comes on, and he doesn't look like the Robert Smith we know. He almost looks like he's in Devo, but he's wearing a green hat.

He hasn't become the quintessential got got punk edge. And can I just talk about Robert Smith's voice? He's always had this sort of like brady. I'm just so weak and weakened by whatever emotion I feel. Like he always does these, oh, I'm sorry. There's a lot of yelping, a lot of moaning, a lot of moaning, a lot of, sighing, a lot of sounds that are melodic but aren't necessarily like melodies. In addition to the melodies, there's all these peripheral sounds, though, that are part of the

emoting, part of the character, part of the emotional output. I once heard that Goths, a lot of people who made goth music were heavily influenced by Jim Morrison in the doors. And I can kind of see it because I feel like there's this sort of like, the same way Jim Morrison has like the growl. Yeah. And that's how he emotes. I feel like a lot of the gots, they're so emotional. And they're like, let's not be afraid to put this emotion in our voice. Listen, let's go there. It's time to talk about what is goth.

What is it? Sure. Is the cure goth? Were they goth? Are they ever, if you were goth before, are you forever goth? All of these questions come into place. So what we've talked about genre many times on the show is one of our favorite topics, because it's really important.

I think a lot of people can get locked into this idea that it's only one thing. Yeah. And it can't be anything else. but the actuality of what genre tends to be is you have to separate it. There's what the music sounds like. Sure. There's the lyrical content. There's what maybe the band looks like or the visuals, right?

Or even the artwork and everything, everything aesthetic about the musical packaging. And then there's who is listening to it and what sort of tribe do they belong to? And is there something that they share, something they have in common? That is, these are sort of some of the component parts, maybe the main ones of genre. But if you just say this is goth or this isn't god. you're going to get lost and be wrong fairly quickly because it's a very reductive and oversimplified thing to say. And let me try to break down just some of that. I would say that the earliest bands that would be considered goth, not by them for the most part, but by people who like goth music, such as myself,

would include but not be limited to Susie and the Banshees. I love Susie. The Birthday Party and Nick Cave. The damned of all people. Like literally considered one of the first punk bands, but basically after that first record, they become kind of a goth. And in no small part because of what Dave Vainian, the lead singer, looks like. And he was a grave digger, which is part of where that look comes from. And by the way, Susie and the Banshees were also punks before they started.

And a lot of it was just the visuals came before the sound. I'll just name a few more Southern Death Cult, Throbbing Gristle, Killing Joke, Bowhouse. By the way, Killing Joke is so slept on. Killing Joke has one of my favorite songs, 80s. 80's by Kelly joke is amazing. So good. I would say that what these bands have in common that make them goth are a little bit more

thematic and visual than Sonic. But some of the sonics of the music they made become concretized into, if I sit down and want to write a goth song, I'm going to start using some of the, for example, guitar effects. And I'm going to create some of the moods and atmospheres that come from having boss pedals like a flange and a delay and a chorus pedal. These are three literally off the rack, inexpensive guitar pedals that a lot of these bands used. So when you hear their music, one defining theme that runs through a lot of it, especially with

the cure, especially with the cure and Susie, are these guitar pedals and some of the sounds and some of the swirl that they create. And I think geography comes into play, too, because a lot of these groups are like, you know, I think there was like, even if they were from America, they were often thought of as English. What I didn't know at the time is that some of the goth culture, at least some of the influences actually have roots in like the Caribbean and Haitian and other places that, you know, you don't typically think of black people being gauze. I certainly didn't.

But like as more people have gotten into sort of like Afrogoth, they've formed their own community sort of like drawing on stuff like The Cure and Susie, but also bringing in stuff like voodoo and a lot of black coaling. It sort of speaks to something that I read in an interview with Robert Smith where he said, I feel a community of spirit with goss and other subcultures who choose to live an alternative. lifestyle, but I wouldn't consider myself to be a part of it. Robert has said many times he doesn't consider the cure to be a goth band saying that it was more of a phase for them. But I think to your point, you know, everybody sort of picks and chooses what part of goth that they will pick off of.

I completely agree. And that's interesting. He said that there's something actually related to religion, I would say too, because some of the sonics of the music, especially these early, you mentioned geography. It's also the time. So 1980, England and Australia with the birthday party. Margaret Thatcher. There's Margaret Thatcher. There's also, I think, a rejection, just like punk rock is kind of a questioning of politics and power.

I'd say a lot of goth music, like lyrically, a lot of the content. A lot of the ideas are questioning religion and some of the presumptions of religion. In fact, Robert Smith and other Robert Smith quote, for the record faith, which is called faith for not no reason. He says, I used to go and write songs in church. I'd think about death. I'd look at all the people in church, and I knew that they were all there. above all because they wanted, quote, eternity.

And I was thinking about when you're young, you're indoctrinated and forced to believe in something. So for him, this early, you know, again, Seminole helps create the template for the sound and feel and lyrical content of goth is about questioning faith. It's about questioning these things that are kind of imposed upon you by your family perhaps and people in your community and the church elders. And this idea, it's like, you know what, maybe we should question that. We shouldn't take it. And some of it is a reclamation of the imagery. and sound a little bit of the imagery. I think of a Catholic church imagery.

It's very dark, right? There's a sort of brutality about a lot of it. And even the sound, a lot of the reverb on the vocals and like even the minor key. It sort of harkens to some Gregorian chant melodies and minor key melodies. So there's kind of, there's something about the church. We call it goth, not for no reason. Gothic architecture were churches. Yeah.

Of the medieval period. What would you say is the pinnacle of the band's gothness? Probably the pornography record. and there's going to be songs before and after that. But that record, to me, is the darkest record. It's sometimes the hardest one to listen to, but it's really good. And just the first line off the first song of the record tells you everything you need to know. Let's listen to the live version of 100 years.

This is from Glasgow 1984. Ready? First line. Does it matter if we all die? Doesn't matter if we all die. That's a mission statement. For those of you not watching us on YouTube, imagine. and Robert Smith looking the most like Robert Smith. Yeah.

You know, like looking literally like a bat. He almost looks like, and the crowd looks like those videos of like the bats in their cage hanging upside down, but then they flip it. And it just looks like a golf part. That's what the crowd looks like. Those are my people, man. This is the coolest band in their coolest era.

1984 Cure. It's like peak, peak, peak. All the way it's up to the late 80s, I would say. What a great performance. What a great performance. I'm glad you put that on the radar. There's so many live performances that are amazing on YouTube. and sometimes you're just like,

I just want to see like this band in that year. And since we mentioned the iconic visuals, right, a couple times now. This is now Robert going from not looking like Robert Smith in their mind. To very much. Like Robert Smith, which is the classic Robert Smith is the big black tussled hair with lots of like hairspray in it so it sticks up.

It's the lipstick, which is smeared. And a fun thing. My favorite kind of lipstick. When it's smeared, it's the best. Smeared it says so much. One theory as to the origin of that look, which we've come to think is so iconic. And so goth, actually, from Steve Severin, the Susie and the Banshees bassist.

Now, you have to remember that in 1982, that was this year... By the way, a bass god, in my opinion. Totally. Like the cure, when you hear a good bass line on Susie track, like, you're just like, oh, my gosh. Susie, another one of my favorite bands of all time. We're definitely going to do an episode. So I mentioned in 1982 sort of the wilderness years begin, where he's no longer... Simon Gallup isn't in the band for two years.

They're not even talking. They had a big fist fight at a bar after a gig. That's why they break up. So in this moment, Robert Smith, in addition to making these sort of poppy singles, join Susie and the Banshees. He's in that band as a touring guitar player for about 18 months,

works on the record hyena. And for him, it's a relief to not be the singer, to just be the guitar player in somebody else's band. But importantly, as Steve Severin says, quote, he was definitely influenced by Susie. You only have to look at him before and after the banshees to see that.

So let's put Robert Smith side by side on the screen with Susie Sue from Susie. And he even has a theory about this smeared lipstick. So here's Steve Severin's smeared lipstick origin theory. We all went to a club in the West End called Legends on opium, or maybe it was LSD. I like it when you don't know which threat you're taking. That's all you can look. Robert borrowed Susie's lipstick, went to the toilet, and when he came back, he had on the

trademark wonky lipstick on, and that was it forever. So Susie and Robert Smith, you never see them together anymore. I wonder, you know. Can we be sure? Can we be sure they're not the same? Hey, man, Paul is dead. All right. I think to the uninitiated, sometimes there's this idea that, like, goth has to be like this sad, dreary music.

And obviously, there are songs like that that I love. You know, pictures of you comes from behind. There's a delicious wallowing in the sadness, yes. But allow me to point out that there are a lot of poppy songs, even in the early part of the Cures catalog, but they're usually the singles. When they were touring in support of pornography, they released a singles compilation,

one of my favorite albums I ever own, Japanese Whispers. It has many of their biggest songs, including this 1983 classic, Love Cats. You know that one from Halloween? That's a really, really fun one. And it's a very fun video.

Also, a personal favorite of mine, The Walk. I think The Walk is one of those songs that I really get into every time. I called you out to midnight. Robert Smith. is like the guy from Interpol. Like, I just feel like maybe it's the register of my voice,

but I feel like we can all sing like them. Like, I pass the howling woman. I think he's the howling woman. He's the howling woman, for sure. Or maybe it's Susie, who knows. I love The Cure. I'm so excited we're doing this episode. We're going to take a quick break.

But when we get back, we're diving into the track, Robert Smith himself as called the best pop song The Cure has ever done. Also, what's a cure is? We've said it a couple of times on this episode. You might be asking yourself, are there elements that you can add to any song to make it sound more like the cure, stick around. We'll break it down after this.

Hey, guys, it's the top of the year. And look, if you're like me, you're trying to figure out your finances. You're thinking about maybe I should pay off some debt. Maybe I should build an emergency fund with everything going on out here. You know, there's also like milestones coming up, like kids tuition, retirement, all kinds of things. And I know it can feel overwhelming sometimes. But here's a solution. Do you want a tool that helps you plan, project, and proactively?

achieve your financial goals. Set yourself up for financial success this year. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. That's right. It brings your entire financial life, budgeting, accounts, even investments, network, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this year and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with Code One Song.

Set yourself up for financial success in 2026 with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use code one song at monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code O-N-E-S-O-N-G. One song. All right, welcome back to One Song. So luxury, you and Robert Smith think this is the best secure song. Not your favorite, but the best, no less.

And it's an incredible song, no doubt. We think that it actually establishes what we're going to call on one song. We're going to copyright this. We're going to call it curisms. These are elements, these are things in so many of our favorite cure songs. It just seemed to be recurring. It's kind of a checklist of things. You won't find all of these in every song, but a lot of these ideas show up in a lot of places.

List off some curisms for us, my man. All right, let's start with the sound. Literally the sound of the instruments and some of the effects that they're using are very iconic. And in many ways, they're very simple. They're off-the-rack pedals in a lot of cases, and off-the-rack guitars. and strings that you can buy. But the way, obviously, they are used and mixed, and the actual performance by the players

gives them a really iconic sound. I'll be specific. Let me just play an example of one song that, to me, epitomizes just like the sound of the cure. And not coincidentally, it is the song that they play first in a lot of their concerts, not least of which is my favorite cure concert video. This is from In Orange, Live in Orange, 1988, Shake Dog Shake.

Just those strums. Man, this just tickles every part of like the pleasure centers in my brain. Just those initial whole note guitar strums are layered and lathered and bathing in effects. And some of the effects in this song in particular, what I hear are the chorus, literally a boss chorus pedal, 100 bucks at any guitar center. The flange, another boss guitar pedal. Probably a phaser might be in there as well. These very simple effects pedals very much define a lot of the sound of a lot of those bands and hugely define, I would say, the cure, because both Robert Smith on his guitar effects board

is using them. And so is Simon Gallup on the bass. So Curism number one, boss effect pedals. What's our next Curism? Another major, major thing is the use of rhythmic motifs. And what this sort of isn't insight into is that when you have a melody that's memorable, it's comprised of two things, the pitch and the rhythm. And what I think Robert Smith and company do is extract that rhythmic thing and give it to the bass, give it to the drums. And these are all hooks. Yeah. And like little, they feel like melodies that you're excited to hear them come up in the song, but they're not necessarily always melodic. And a lot of times they're really persistent through the song. We're going to hear this today in Just Like Heaven. There's a base motif in

particular that we hear in this song and other Acure songs. That's a very familiar one. So here are a couple of examples of motifs. This is Fascination Street. Listen to the baseline on this song, and then we'll talk about it. Let up, la da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Now let me just say one thing. Listen to that motif. That particular motif goes through the whole song, becomes very hypnotic to hear this rhythm. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And now that I said that in the room without pitch, does that remind you of anything? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. That's a That's Phil Collins in the air. That's the same rhythm as the drum.

It's found in a lot of things. It's also found in the Beatles and the ends. Do, do, don, do, don, do, do, do, do. So that rhythmic motif is carried through the whole song, and it's very pure to have a rhythmic motif carried through the song. Another example, and there are many more. I'll just give you a few more.

Check out Close to Me. Close to me is great song. Hot, Hot, Hot, Hot has the famous three on E. Yeah. Dun, done. And one last one. One of my favorites. I'll play it for you.

I know this one well. Longtime listeners of the show, what does that sound like? Oh, you're going to say a town called malice? Which is part of the family that we talked about on Iggy Pop Lust for Life. I think it was just a thing that people forget, people used to dance at dance clubs, even at rock clubs. Like the goss, you always want a song where you can kind of go like this. Exactly. Like those people who were about to get killed by the Terminator in that one scene when you like walked into the club and they were playing intimacy, intimacy.

which actually sounds like an Interpol early Cure song. So go back and watch the Terminator intimacy. Great track. The Cure Why Can't IBEU uses the same rhythmic motif that we heard in Iggy Pop, Lus for Life. Go back to that episode because we named 20 other songs, not the least of which is Town Call Malice, just walking on sunshine Katrina and the waves. Jed, are you going to be my girl? So it's part of that rhythmic motif family as well.

So Curism number two, rhythmic motifs. That run through the whole song. That run through the whole song. have a curism I want to throw out there. I think you'll agree with it. I noticed that he likes to bring in instruments one at a time. Absolutely. Like, I didn't notice this until we started working on this episode, but now I can't unhear it. Like, it's such a curism. It's the Bob build. Bob's always building, Robert Smith being Bob. Talk to us about this curism. Well, we just heard it on Fascination Street, right? It tends to start with maybe two instruments, maybe one. Yeah, we heard it on

high. We've heard it on so many of these songs. We're going to hear it on just like heaven. it's just the introduction of instruments over the span of many bars. So just like heaven, you're going to be hearing drums and bass. And then the first guitar comes in, then the second guitar comes in, then the third guitar comes in with the melody, and the keyboards, I think I forgot to mention it in there. But basically, there's a build that lasts nearly an entire minute before we hear any vocals. He's not a guy who comes in right on the song.

Not always, yeah. Sometimes it doesn't matter if we all die. He likes to give you a solid minute and a half sometimes of just the instruments. And then he's like, okay, now I'll see. But that buildup, Bob's build, is definitely a major cureism. Curism number three, Bob's build, gradually bringing in instruments over the course of the first one. I'm glad you're calling it Bob's build. Thanks, what's the next Curism?

Next up, we have chord cycles number four. And to be clear, this is sort of like a checklist. Not every song does this and not exclusively cure songs do this. But very often in this, and in the song we're talking about today, There's a cycle of chords, sort of like the motif that hypnotically repeats throughout the entirety of the song. They're often four of them, and they're often quite a satisfying. Within the four chords, you sort of get the tension, the build, and the release, and then you're back to one again. So that chord change family thing we've talked about on many episodes.

We did our medley of songs at the top of the episode. Exactly right. All of the songs in our medley at the beginning of this episode cycle through the same four chords. And the point we were making is many songs are in that family. We'll talk more about it when we get to the guitars in the stage. but that's part of the chord cycle thing that is a cureism. Curism number four, chord cycles. I have one more that I think we agree upon,

which is it wouldn't be a cure song without the voice of Robert Smith. Such a distinct voice. Like there's so much emotion in his voice. Like he sort of like yelps it out. Like we were joking like, how would he describe like today in LA? It's a beautiful day in LA. Like, you know, like there's so many things he does. It's so distinctive, yeah.

It's so distinctive, but it's so emotional. and it really just draws you in because he taps into, I think, something that we all feel, especially if you're like an outsider, which is just like, why can't I be you? It's very yearning and trying. It's effort-filled. He's, you know, he was-

frustration. I do it's frustration in there like, why can't I fit in? You're looking, you're having fun. You look like you're having fun. He'd be the first to say that he's no Shaka Khan. Like, he's not like a master- I'm not Shaka-Kan.

He's a great singer because we relate emotionally to what he's saying, but not necessarily because he's like, a masterfully powerful, like church level, you know, the voice level singer. It helps all these songs be releasing along that you don't have to be shaka-a-con. Look, I'll try to be shaka-con. I often try to get enough drinks to me

and it's nighttime, I will try to be shaka-ca-ca-kata. But even sober, we all think we could be Robert Smith to a certain extent. We all can be Robert Smith. It's accessible, to your point. That's what's ironic. He wonders why he can't be you,

but we're like, why can't we be him? There's that whole slate of bands in the early odds, like VHS or Beta. Antropole. The Rapture. Oh, yeah, the Rapture. Hot, hot heat.

There were many bands that were loving Robert Smith's voice and kind of sound like him. Go back and listen to some of those bands. Badages, baddages in my eyes will. That's very Robert Smith. Absolutely. So Curism number five,

sound like Robert Smith. Robert Smith's vocals do a lot. And arguably the most important thing because out of the 50-year history, Robert Smith is the only consistent through line for all of the songs you've ever heard by The Cure. They all feature him on vocals. That's very true.

All right, without further ado, let's start with those iconic driving drums. All right, here's Boris Williams at 152 BPM. So one thing I want to point out is we're going to hear three motifs. Okay. And you just heard two of them. One, motif A, I'll call it, is the drum fill that starts what is essentially a 16-bar loop that goes through the whole song. But with these really satisfying two things, motifs, so these are patterns that we hear over and over. and there's a specific symbol that he's using,

which is relatively unusual in pop music, not never, but it's kind of more of a metal sound. So listen for the crash symbol. It's a special kind of crash that I'll be explaining in just a moment. So I'll point it out here. It comes in this section. Right here. It sounds a little different from your typical crash.

We're going to hear it again right here. And then finally, this is the third motif, which happens at the end of the cycle, to get us back to the next loop. Two things to listen for. One is that crash, which I've already mentioned, but we're also that crash, and we're emphasizing the two.

We're not coming in on the one, we're coming in on the two. I'll point that out. Okay. One, two. Yeah. So all the way through, all of those motifs really emphasize that two. I'll play the second one again.

Here we go. One, two. Yeah. So that's a really important thing. The two is emphasized the song a lot by those motifs and the fact that he's hitting his China crash which is kind of more heard

in metal and maybe jazz than it is in most pop music. What it is is it's a crash symbol just like any other you'd see on the drum kit. The difference is that it's a little higher in pitch. It's bright it's crisp and it's kind of metallic sounding. So it's a very small detail

but it's distinctive sounding as well. It really helps determine the character of the song I'm just thinking about like why is that too like why does it make you go do do do like it's like it's like trying to drag a moody goth teenager you know to school in the morning like you know it's just like okay mom I guess I'll come you know like it's like that two does a lot because I was thinking like what would be the opposite if it landed on the one it would be like one two three four like one is way too go get her yeah you got to drag those gods two is against their will

yeah two is against the will man that crash level came in a beat too late While we're on the subject of the motif, let's talk about the bass. Let's talk about the bass, because that's the motif that motifs are made out in this song. I mean, motif. I mean, I would say Simon Gallup is an unsung hero, not just of this song, but of this band. So this is Simon on bass. And just to give him a little flowers, he's had the longest tenure in the QR besides Bob, the longest standing member, minus those two years when they had a bar room fight between them and didn't talk for 18 months.

Who hasn't had a bar room fight with their partner? Am I right, luxury? Absolutely. Let's have one today. after this episode. Like we haven't already. I would say that Simon Gallup is the main motif man in the cure. Motifs can happen in every instrument.

We just heard them in the drums. But boy, do we hear a lot of motifs across cure songs in the bass. So in this particular instance, this is a very cure motif because we've heard it in other cure songs. It's this two bar loop and the rhythm is done, done, done, done, done, done, done, done, done, done, done, done, which as long time cure fans might recognize is also used in in between days from 1985. So that's the done, done, done, done.

Yeah, I hear it. I hear it. Now let's listen to Simon Gallup's isolated bass stems from Just Like Heaven. So that rhythm is literally one, two, three, and four, and one, one, two, three, and four, and, and, and four, and. And we're hearing it in that song. Yeah. Same as we're hearing it in in between days. There's a tiny, you know, there's one additional eighth note.

And it's a motif they'd use again in Friday, I'm in Love from 1992. Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Done. I don't care about you. It's Friday. I'm in love. This is a cureism that the cure

uses themselves as a cureism to remind themselves that they are the cure. So we hear that particular motif. A robot with band, all we? I forget. All we the stown rouses. Go to our checklist. Motif number 52.

I believe we're the cure. I like the idea that they have to remind themselves. It's the cure. The guitars are always, very prominent and I got to ask right out of the bed, is this a case of our curism? Like, are there a lot of boss effect pedals in play? Let's listen and find out. They sound so far away, like in a good way. It sounds like... Why are you so far away, she said. Why are you so emotionally distant, Robert Smith? When you say far away, what do you mean by that?

You know, I mean, it might just be the echo or the reverb or whatever, but it does sound immediately dated, not like it was recorded in the 60s or 70s. but there's something very like 80s and early 90s about the way that those guitars sound. I think I can pick up on a couple of things. One of them is the Curism. So the 80sness is coming from. There is definitely a chorus on that.

The effects pedals, there's definitely a chorus. There might be a little flange on that particular one. But there's probably... Yeah, I think I hear some flange. I'm glad you said that. I hear some flange. I think so. And I think that there is some reverb

that might be giving it the... You said distance, but it's... Yes. When you add reverb to something, it makes it less dry. So it feels like you're in a room. It could be a small room. It could be a large room.

But reverb is kind of an older sounding effect in a lot of ways. Like it does kind of evoke 60s Phil Specter, wall of sound. A lot of that era is more reverby than, say, delay, which gives you space in a different way. I'm hearing a little bit of that there. I don't know if that's what you're hearing. I'm hearing the space. Like, it doesn't feel like you're in a chapel. It doesn't feel like the ceiling's way up there.

Yeah, this is not Led Zeppelin. Yeah. But this is also not like, you know, warm. and like you're next to the guitar. It sounds like you're... No, you're right. A good amount of distance. I think that is part of the atmospheric moody guitar sound

in our curisms. Yeah. That happens in this song. And across the catalog is there is a lot of reverb across the Cures catalog. It's not very dry. It doesn't feel close and intimate. No, it's not close and intimate.

I think the ultimate effect of all of what we're saying is that it feels moody. Yeah. It feels a little bit dark, not like in a sinister way, but just sort of like in a dark, gray sky kind of way. So just to put some names to some of these sounds,

and I can't necessarily correlate all of them, but Robert Smith is credited with guitars, as is another unsung hero, of the band and of the song, Porrell Thompson, aka Pearl for his art career. And I say that because Porrell is another member of Robert Smith's coterie

that's been around since day one. Their school buds. He was in an early version of the EasyCure, and he has been not just a musician, and they often call him the best musician in the band, because he plays saxophone, he plays keyboards and guitar. But he's also the visual artist behind a lot of the early, and most of the 80s Cure album part. Wow, he was the aesthetician.

Porrell and his, that's right, Porrell and his graphic design partner did that kind of iconic calligraphy, the graphics that you see in a lot of Early Cure records and videos and album covers. And he's playing guitar on this song. Now, I say that because in the video, we see both Robert Smith and Porrell playing guitars. Roberts playing the acoustic 12 string. I'm not sure if that means necessarily they were recorded that way. But let's listen and picture in our mind that iconic music video, starting with Robert Smith coming in with this acoustic 12 string. It's so great.

And it gives it kind of a Spanish-y. It does. I was going to say, you know, this again takes me back to the Defeche Mode episode where they had this big fascination with the American West and flamenco guitars. And that sort of, to me, that's the jangliness that I hear in these songs. that it's translated over into like, you know, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, early blur. Like, it's that jangliness, like that brang. And you're right.

It's a slumingo guitar. Smith has been doing that too because in the previous record on the In Between Days record, there's a song called The Blood, which just is a straight up like Spanish flamenco song. Yeah. And last but not least, in the guitar section, we have this incredibly important and iconic melody line, which is literally just a descending and ascending scale. Let's listen and then we'll talk about it. So it goes down twice and now it goes up.

You once said something on this show that it has always stayed with me, which is the idea that like a lot of our favorite songs are literally just ascending or descending broken scales. And that's what I hear now when I hear this part. It's like it's going kind of where you expect it to go, but it's going there in a wonderful way and then it comes back down from that high. It's just satisfying. It's A, A, B, A.A.

And that's a pattern that our ears are used to. And so it's very gratifying. Whether it music or in poetry. Yeah. What about the chords of this song? You know, earlier we did our little medley of songs, Semisonic, Katie Perry, Cher. And that was based on the sort of like the 1524, the what we call the axis of awesome. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, so explain to us how that comes into play here. Right. So the axis of awesome, we've talked about on several other episodes of this show. Go back to Miley Cyrus the Flowers episode. I think it came up there. And it definitely came up on Olivia Rodriguez when we did good for you. So four chords that are, go back to, I think, early YouTube,

there was this great video by this Australian group, The Axis of Awesome, who did a medley of dozens of songs that used the chords that you mentioned with one slight variation. So this is, as you mentioned, one, five, two, four. It turns out that 12% of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 use some variation of those four chords. Either in that sequence or with some shifting, so the five comes first or the two comes first.

Or sometimes the two is a six. All this to say, 12% of songs in popular music, and therefore your ear is very accustomed to hearing these chords together. AI does not disagree with you, my friend. But how does this relate to a song called Another Girl, Another Planet? Well, let's listen to that song, and then we'll talk about it. This is by the only ones. It's called Another Girl, Another Planet from 1978.

You're having thoughts. My man is having thoughts over here. I can tell when there's thoughts being had. I've heard this song before, but it's just because we just finished talking about the axis of awesome and these certain cores. Now I'm thinking like, don't stop believing. Yeah. By journey is the original axis of awesome. Yeah, right.

That one's in there. These chords are slightly different because the third chord is different. But the difference is, it's like you can rearrange. So the chords in another girl, another planet are 1564 instead of 1524. But two and six are sort of functionally interchangeable. Yeah. Right? And it's a minor two and a minor six.

The rest of the chords are the same. There's a similar tempo. There's obviously a similarity in how there's an instrumental with a melody that rises and falls, basically as a scale in the first 50 seconds of the song before the vocals come in. All those same events take place in Just Like Heaven, right? But when you really break it down and verbalize that out loud, what you're saying is, okay, the chord changes are similar, not identical, but similar, and there is a scale being played, right? Which gets to the point, the heart of the matter on all of these like X sounds like Y conversations,

which is, well, there are similarities, but is anyone not listening to the first song because the second one came out and replaced it? Or is it generally the opposite that people often go back in time and find a song that people say sounds like the new one? So Robert Smith himself says, I didn't realize it at the time, but the structure is actually very similar to a song. called Another Girl, Another Planet, when we just heard, which, back to his quote, I can still vividly remember hearing on the radio late at night in the mid-70s. The main difference is that as the song progressed, I introduced different chord changes to give it a slightly melancholic feeling.

And to that point, the chord changes are not just chord changes, it's actually a key change. So once we get to the U-Lost and Lonely part, the song shifts from A major to D-major. So let's listen to the stems. Here's what to listen for. We're going to hear two chords that are just a half step apart, repeating three times that shift from the minor three to the four. It's very tense. It's a half step. We talked about a half step recently on the Nause episode.

That's right. So this half step is very tense. And then after these six bars of tension, we get four bars of really gratifying release on the D major, and we're just kind of lingering their lovingly. So listen for that as I play for you, the isolated guitar. I'll put some synth in there too. We're in the four bars of release.

It's a real magic trick of songwriting that we left the key, went to this completely different place. It was melancholy to use Robert Smith's words about what he did. And then we come right back home to this beautiful landscape. Thank God for those major notes. It was sort of like, oh, we're back home, we're safe. It was very tense and strange. And then we got back. And the strangeness is really emphasized when we get to the vocals.

I'll point out some of the ways that the strangeness is in. emphasized even more. What's going on with the keys on this song? I feel like there might be multiple keys. Not only there are multiple keys, but in the video, there are multiple keyboard players. And I'm not sure that either of the people playing keyboards in the video are actually playing in the song. But it could very well be Lal Tallhurst, Lawrence, who in the video is shown on one keyboard. He was starting to be a little bit iced out of the band, but he wasn't yet. But there was a second keyboard player who had been brought in who was more properly able to play keys. And that's Roger O'Donnell. You'll see him in the video. He definitely is not on the song because he had

joined the band yet when the song was recorded. And last but not least, Pearl Thompson is also credited with the keyboards. Let's listen and decide whose fingers this sound like. Big 80s, just one note in an octave. So that runs through the intro, just big, bright 80s sounding synth. And we've talked so much about how he brings in instruments one by one. But like, I generally join in with the song when these high elements come in. So on Friday, it's when the guitar, And on this one, I'm definitely, I picture you hiding in the corner for the first 25 seconds, then you jump out and you play your notes.

Just waiting for my notes, man. I'm waiting for my notes. And then, of course, we have this iconic solo, which is very simple and beautiful. Sounds like it's on, to my ears, it sounds like it's a piano sound, but it sounds like an 80s keyboard piano, like an Ensonique or something like that.

Let's listen to it. Oh, yeah. With delay on it. I love that part. And by the way, it should be mentioned, this is relevant for, especially for the Deep Cure fandom. At that part of the video, it's Mary Poole, who's actually dancing in the video, which is Robert Smith's longtime girlfriend slash wife. He's only, to our knowledge as cure fans, like only ever been with her since high school. Another important thing to sort of keep in mind across the Cure catalog, he's kind of always singing about Mary.

Now, that's extrapolation. That's so romantic. It's so romantic. This should have been our Valentine's Day episode. There's something so romantic about this band. I think it's important because when you think about the cure, I think about how Robert Smith has always been with Mary and how all these love songs are to Mary Poole.

And you see her as sort of a rare glimpse of her because she's not in the public eye very much, but she is dancing in the video during the solo. And Robert beautifully says, because he dances with her, he says the video director was suggesting we get a girl, and he's like, I'm only going to dance with one person, and that's Mary. That explains so much. I think that's why, as opposed to other words,

rock bands, the Cure catalog, with one notable exception, has aged so well, like, lyrically. Like, there's nothing, there's nothing duchy about the cure. Yeah, there's nothing duchy about the cure. They're not a bunch of music. I love that. Like, I feel like their songs age well, and it actually makes sense because he's singing about a legitimate love. He's not like...

I think the authenticity is right there in the lyrics. Like, it really... Oh, that makes me like this fan even more. Yeah, me too. For most of my life, including in the run-up to this episode, I heard the opening lyrics wrong, everybody. I heard, the one that makes me scream,

she's sick. I thought that was so cool. The one that makes me scream, she's sick. Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick. The one that makes me scream, she's sick. Like, I thought, like, sick as in cool.

Sick is in, like, you know. You think that's in Robert Smith's vernacular? Dude, I didn't know. Mary, you're sick, bro. I thought it was sick. And I, that line definitely connected with me. It just goes to show. Sometimes you can create art and people interpret it wrong, but they just like, they put it inside themselves. I thought that was the great,

the one that makes me scream, she's sick. I thought that was so freaking cool. And when I read the lyrics this week and I was like, oh, he says she said twice. I was like, I've been wrong. I'm sorry, Robert. I should have listened more carefully. I apologize. Here we go, guys, the isolated Robert Smith vocals. Okay. And challenge for you, the listener, Tell me if you hear any repeated melodies or any rhymes. Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick. The one that makes me scream, she said. The one that makes me love, she said.

All right, there's some rhymes in there. I was wrong about that. But there's not a lot of repeated melodies. He's doing a lot of different things. He's being very playful with the melody. And that's true across all the verses of the song, which are the bulk of the vocals. They're rhymish.

They're near rhymes. There are some more rhymes than I remember. But there are a lot of near rhymes, and there aren't any, I don't think, repeated melodies in the verses. That I believe. But it also makes me feel better about thinking that he says she's sick because I thought he rhymed trick with sick. Oh, but there you go. There's not for no reason that you thought that. But he clearly says she said the second time.

And I was like, throw her arms around my neck. I was like, it's rhymy, but it's not a rhyme. Yeah. And that's okay. Because he's being vulnerable. Let Robert sing what he's feeling. Let Robert do what he wants to do. He's talking about Mary Pool.

We love Mary Pool. Let Robert do his thing. I'll let them do it. Guys, why are you stopping them? So in that opening line, show me how you do that trick. It sounds really playful. It almost sounds childlike. Yeah.

And that's intentional. Robert Smith has said that part of it actually comes from his childhood obsession with magic tricks. Magic comes up so many times on the show. Like, a lot of musicians want to be magicians. I don't know. I don't know if that's, is that true? I think it's true. I mean, a lot of actors.

A lot of the spectrum on the cool coulometer. Well, on the cool olometer, I think the magicians hands down, right? Everybody, everybody wants to be related to a magician. No one's going to disagree with me. Everybody wants to say, yeah, it's my dad, the magician. But, oh, that was really neat. That's not the spirit of this show. Sorry, Dad.

If your dad's a magician, I apologize. But Robert had this love of magic. But on another level, it can be read as a seduction trick. That's the way I sort of read it. And Robert has said the song is about, quote, hyperventilating, kissing, and fainting to the floor. That's what he said. Look, I'm not sure that's my kink, but, hey,

to each their own. The man is in love with this woman. I know, I know. Bob loves Mary. It's the cutest thing in the world. It's the cutest thing in all of goth history. A half century of Bob loving Mary. It's like if you had a goth puppy and he was in love, this goth puppy love. Let's hear the chorus because I think that this is the chorus. You mentioned earlier, does it have a chorus? I think this is the chorus. Listen, it's kind of more of a refrain than a chorus. We only hear it twice and we kind of only hear it one and a half times. The first time around we get that full 10 bars that I was mentioning, six. bars of the tension and four bars of the release.

That only happens once. And then at the end of the song, we kind of get half of that. Half of that. Let's hear it real quick. You, who lost and only you, strangers angels dancing in the deepest oceans to see it. And there's a crazy harmony in there. I don't know if you noticed it, but I'm going to play it again.

Listen for one of our favorite words of this show in the past year. There's a tritone. Oh, I do it was going to trytone. You knew it was going to trytone. There's a tritone in this harmony, which impede. implies that it's like Lydian mode, but it adds to the strangeness of this moment. Here it is. I'll point it out as it happens.

Right here. It's maniacal. That's part of why that note feels so crazy because it is a tritone. It's literally a minor third on top of a minor third. Like how do you go into the booth? These are all Robert, by the way. There's no other way else sing in the song. Does Robert write the lyrics?

Robert is, for the most part, the almost 100% songwriter, we think, across much of his catalog. But we're going to talk about that a little more in the split. Certainly the lyrics is unquestioned. That lyrics and melody is unquestioned. But because you say that he's the through line for the band. Is there anybody else who we know had a heavy hand in just talking about the catalog in general, the music of the band? I'll be honest with you. I've read a lot of books.

I've seen a lot of interviews. It's not frequently discussed what the actual literal contributions of other bands. of other bandmates are. It's unclear to me where he brings a demo and where the line is between, guys, let's work this song up together and the final result. It's not always, I think a lot of it is worked up

in the demo stage. But I think obviously a lot comes from, I think Boris, for example, on the song, the drummer contributed those iconic motifs from my understanding. And from listening to the demos. And then at the very end, we finally hear the song title.

You who, soft and only, you who lost. This time, no tension, just the song title. Just like heaven. Then they hit that nice note. It's resolution. That's the only time we hear that, which is part of why I'm wondering,

is that even the chorus? Because we don't even hear just like heaven. Oh, but I like a song that only brings up the title once. Those are some of my favorite, you know. It feels poetic. It feels special. It does. All right, luxury.

Now that we heard the song, tell us how the splits break down. So Bob gets 60. I keep saying Bob. I do believe that's what they call them. within the band. Robert Bob Smith gets 60%. And that is divided lyrics, 50, music, 10, interestingly enough. And I think generously, he's given Simon, Boris, Loll, Lawrence, and Paul, aka Poral, are also credited with 10% each. So they get 10, he gets 10, the four of them get 10 each. And Bob gets 60. I keep saying Bob, it doesn't feel right anymore. I'm going to go back to Robert because it feels more respectful. And I think that that's in part because of the actual,

contributions that they're making on the musical side. But I also think it's part of what keeps a band together. And Robert has talked, and we've talked a little bit earlier on the show, about the history of getting to this lineup in the band. Once he locked in with this lineup, he loved playing with them. And it was so gratifying to have an actual band, especially after the early years of kind of having people come and go, that part of it is a retention strategy, in my humble opinion.

I think part of it is you keep a band together by being generous. And whether or not they literally put 10% of just, like heaven into the song. These band members did a lot for the band. Sure. Watching them live, what an incredible group of musicians, it's mesmerizing. So I think the splits reflect that a little bit too. I can see that. So Diallo, what do you think the legacy of just like heaven is? Well, like I just said, I think this song, much like their catalog, has aged incredibly well.

I think every generation at some point discovers a song by the cure that can resonate with them and encourage them to pick up an instrument and start playing music. I will say this is one of those groups that always makes always makes me want to make more music. You know, I always feel like The Cure and Blondie. Hip-hop and electronic music, I have a whole other canon of groups, but when it comes to specifically, like, guitar-driven rock, this is just one of those groups where I'm just like, yeah, it's so personality-driven

and it's so emotional and it feels so real. I just can't help but love it. So I think their legacy is that they are still making music, winning Grammys, and winning fans. I completely agree with you. And I think part of their enduring appeal, It's not just the songwriting. The songwriting is a huge part of it. But the reason why 14-year-olds today

and 14-year-olds in next generation and beyond will probably find something appealing about the cure is there's a resonance, there's an emotional resonance that's baked into the songwriting, but also the visuals, the legacy, the mythology, the fact of them being canonical at this point, they're right up there with Joy Division and Depeche Mode. These are canonical bands that have meaning

in a way that's baked into culture. So it's the music, it's the, It's the culture. It's the visuals. It's the community and subculture and all that wonderful stuff. And this stuff trickles down. The visuals like the goth aesthetic is an aesthetic forever. It will live forever. I mean, it came out before the 80s. They were literally copying people for the previous century. That's right. And that's appealing in addition to the music. And as a package, it has an undeniable appeal. It's part of why I still love it to this day. It has almost a half century of appeal to me personally. Okay, luxury. It's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or hidden gym with you. The One Song Nation and with each other.

Luxury, I'm going to ask you to go first. And today, I think we're going to keep it with The Cure. We're going to talk about Cure covers, covers of Cure songs that we really enjoy. So what's yours? Awesome. Well, I'm going to do the song we did today. My favorite cover of The Cure is Just Like Heaven by Dinosaur Jr. Big J. Maskis fan.

I don't know that I know this. This version is so good. I can't wait. I'm going to play you the part, and I can't wait to see your reaction to it. Okay. I did not see that. that cover. Up until that point,

he sounded like, he sounded like a drunk co-ed in college or something like that. I love Dinosaur Jr. That's the daymaster sound. I do, too. I did not see that one coming. And it ends like this,

just for some satisfaction. Stoio. That's the end of the song? Yeah. This is on you? Abruptly. Oh, I kind of like that. I love a song or a movie

that ends really abruptly, you're like, oh, that's all I got? It's genuinely terrifying. Like when it ends like that, you're like, what the fuck? No country for old men? Abrupted it. Oh, boy, I don't remember that. Oh, my gosh. I probably drowned it out.

Internal Affairs is a great movie for the 80s. I don't like scary things. I don't like to be scared. What about you, Dialla? What is your cure cover du jour for one more song? Well, I'm going to set some history here at the show because I'm actually going to do two more songs. What?

Two more songs. It's a misnomer. My cure cover is a song by the group, Novell Vague, and they covered a forest in a very sort of like Basanova elevator music style, but I found it really endearing. This is Novell Vague with a forest. Tell you, do you get a whole Vague? It's a acoustic guitar.

It works. It's Bossa Nova. They did a Bossa Nova cover of a forest, and it really works. It really works. The chord changes in that song, in the actual song, which they just, you know, are using. Yeah. They sound native to what Bossa Nova chord changes. Kind of.

sounded like so that sounded really authentic. That whole album, if you're into like really cool covers in a Bosanova style, that new Valvang album is a really, it's a good album. It's a good purchase. But for the first time ever, I do have one more song on top of that. And that is because being big fans of The Cure and everything that they influence, you and I did a song together. We haven't made many songs together, but we did do a song together called Black Nerds,

which was for my show, Sherman Showcase. and I was going for sort of a Robert Smith, even more so the Interpol song. Right. And this is a song produced by our man luxury, sung by me. This is Black Nerds. He had a lot of fun that day.

That was great. That was a lot of fun. And you put a tritone in that song. I even know what a tritone was at the time. And you put it in the song. You put it in there. You knew. Robert Smith will see you at Glastonbury.

As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram. at Diallo, Dioa, LLO, and on TikTok at Diallo. And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y and on TikTok at Luxury-X. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok at One Song Podcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube. Just search for One Song podcast.

We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe. And be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, you're officially part of the One Song Nation. Show us some love, give us five stars, leave a review, and send this episode to a fellow music fan. It really helps keep the show going. Luxury, help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, musicologist, and KCRW DJ every Friday night from 10 p.m. till midnight.

Luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, D. Allo Ridd. And this is one song. We'll see you next time. This episode is produced by Melissa Duenas. Our video editor is Casey Simonson, mixing by Michael Harmon and engineering by by Eric Mr. Patience Hicks. This show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein,

Brian Smiley, Eric Weil, and our friends at Art Beat. We'll see you soon.