Robert Smith (musician)

Robert James Smith (born April 21, 1959), a guitarist, vocalist and songwriter, is the lead singer and driving force behind English post-punk/gothic rock band The Cure since its founding in 1976. Smith has played the 6 and 12 string guitars; 4 and 6 string bass guitars; double bass; piano; drums; violin; trumpet and trombone, in various combinations.

Overview

See also the history of The Cure

Smith has written or co-written the bulk of The Cure's music and lyrics in a career spanning 25 years. He has also been involved in other musical projects, including a stint with Siouxsie & the Banshees and his side-project with Steven Severin called The Glove. He has also contributed vocals to a number of independent projects and performances.

Robert Smith is instantly recognizable for his image, which includes deliberately smeared red lipstick and messy black hair that some have compared to a large spider. Smith's image has contributed to the frequent classification of The Cure as a goth band, a moniker Smith rejects. Smith is also known for his distinctive wavering singing style.

Smith's lyrics are frequently poetic and as frequently inscrutable. Smith has stated that they are often the product of some "altered state," such as drugs or sleep.

Smith met Mary Poole in school when he was 14 years old. Smith explains that his class was asked to choose partners for an activity. He mustered the courage to ask Mary and, as he says, got lucky. They have been together since and were married in 1988. The song "Love Song" was written as a wedding present for Mary. They have agreed to remain childless.

In October 2004, he stood in as one of three guest presenters for John Peel on BBC Radio 1, a week before the DJ's untimely death.

"Just Like Heaven" is reportedly Smith's favorite pop song that The Cure has produced and easily one of the public's most popular in which he details a lost love: " found myself alone alone alone above the raging sea / that stole the only girl I loved / and drowned her deep inside of me. "

Public opinion has often been that, according to the music he writes, Robert Smith must be a deeply depressed soul. However, this quote disputes that sentiment:

" At the time we wrote Disintegration...it's just about what I was doing really, how I felt. But I'm not like that all the time. That's the difficulty of writing songs that are a bit depressing. People think you're like that all the time, but I don't think that. I just usually write when I'm depressed." -Robert Smith in a 1989 interview [1]

Discography

Band discography

→ See The Cure discography from 1976 (start) to present

→ See The Glove discography in 1983 (only album)

→ See Siouxsie & the Banshees discography: 1983-1984

Collaborations

In 2003, Robert Smith worked in collaboration with the band Blink-182 on the track "All of This" of their album Blink-182.

In 2004, Blank & Jones remixed " A Forest" featuring Robert Smith on vocals. There is an EP+ Bonus DVD with 4 audio remixes, The music video featuring Robert Smith and an interview by Blank & Jones with Robert Smith that takes place before the video shoot. That year, he also provided vocals for Junior Jack for the club hit "Da Hype". In November, he joined Placebo onstage at their Wembley arena gig to sing Placebo's "Without You I'm Nothing" and Smith's own "Boys Don't Cry."

In 2005, Robert Smith teamed up with Billy Corgan, the former lead singer of both the Smashing Pumpkins and Zwan, to do a cover of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody" on Corgan's first solo release, TheFutureEmbrace.

Solo discography

For more than two decades, Robert Smith has been hinting at a solo album which has never materialized. It is often believed that most of his solo writing end up in The Cure, with such closer tracks as "Homesick", "Untitled", "Treasure", "Bare", "Going Nowhere", but Smith denied this, crediting those songs to other members:

" I didn't write "Homesick" and I didn't write the music too. It's another misconception. […] Out of the 12 songs on the CD, I think I only wrote six musically... "Untitled"... (to Simon [Gallup]) You wrote that one ? ...It was Roger [O'Donnell]. So it [(Disintegration)] couldn't have been a solo album and if I'd done on my own it wouldn't have sounded anything like The Cure anyway apart from my own voice. The Top album could have been a solo album but it's not true the way we worked in studio […] " – Robert Smith in a 1989 interview [2]

Curiosa Festival

Curiosa is the name of a 2004 concert tour curated by Robert Smith. Smith hand selected all 11 openers to perform before his band The Cure. It began with a concert in West Palm Beach, Florida on July 24 and ended in Los Angeles, California on August 27.

The headlining bands were The Cure, Interpol, Thursday, The Rapture, and Mogwai. The concert had two stages, with the headlining bands on the main stage and the less popular bands on the second stage. Bands on the second stage changed throughout the tour.

The second stage bands included Muse, Cursive, Head Automatica, scarling., The Cooper Temple Clause, and Melissa Auf Der Maur.

External links

Extensive 1989 Robert Smith interview