The Cure frontman Robert Smith has revealed the band has “gone through an awful lot” in the lead-up to Songs of a Lost World.
Smith, 65, told BBC Radio 6 Music he was not expecting to reach his seventieth birthday and was “not really looking forward” to it. In an interview with Huw Stephens, the Friday I’m In Love hitmaker said their upcoming album was one of their most personal and that songwriting was “much harder to do” now he had grown older.
The Cure teased a return to the studio and stage earlier this year with cryptic posters at The Railway Inn in Crawley, where they played their first-ever gig. It was later revealed to be a tease for new material, Songs of the Lost World, releasing tomorrow (November 1).
Speaking to the BBC, Smith said: “When I turned 60, I promised myself that I would stop thinking about anniversaries and upcoming stuff. It is kind of hard. The Cure anniversary […] I had my tongue in my cheek a bit when I was saying all that because I thought well, honestly I‘d be really happy if I get to Christmas.
“The band’s gone through an awful lot in the last year and I’m making light of it but it becomes … you are inevitably encouraged within your own self just to think more about the day to day than you are about… so I’m looking forward to Christmas, I’m not really looking forward to my 70th birthday.
“If we get to my 70th birthday I’m quite happy for you to blow out the candles but, yeah I don’t think it’s tempting fate but I really just, I’m enjoying what we’re doing at the moment and I don’t really see any point in looking beyond it.”
Smith also revealed writing had been a challenge for the upcoming album and said he did not “feel like singing” some of his lyrics. “It’s the one thing, as I’ve grown older, that I’ve found much much harder to do, to write words that I want to sing,” he said. “I can write words but I don’t really feel like singing them. So to arrive at that point where I think that it’s worth singing these songs, it has become really, really hard. I have to admit.”
Songs of a Lost World marks The Cure’s first album release since 2018’s Torn Down: Mixed Up Extras and their first of original material in sixteen years. Smith also said some of the songs featured on Songs of A Lost World “drag me back” to earlier times, while also revealing a second album is on the way.
He said: “Yeah a couple of them are… I don’t know hard… they drag me back into a mindset and emotional state which I don’t mind actually because it kind of reminds me how to feel […] The emotional songs still reconnect me with like… When we do it too much, I do find myself becoming a little bit maudlin. I realise sometimes that’s probably enough, we’ve been touring for long enough, I get very kind of self-obsessed with some stuff so […] everything becomes very raw again.
“But on the upside is that I’m actually out there on stage being able to sing and so it really does help me, certainly in 2022 when we started doing these songs and I felt really… there’s nothing better than going out there… there’s nothing better than singing, if I’m honest.”
Songs of a Lost World releases November 1. You can watch The Cure’s 6 Music Session on BBC iPlayer.
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