Despite making one of the greatest albums of all time, The Cure had never won a Grammy before today. But in the ceremony’s pre-show, Robert Smith and co. took home Best Alternative Music Album for Songs of a Lost World and Best Alternative Music Performance for “Alone.” Per a report, The Cure were not present to accept the award due to former bandmate Perry Bamonte’s funeral.
The Cure were nominated for Best Alternative Album 33 years ago for Wish and again in 2001 for Bloodflowers. In the Best Alternative Music Album category, the band won over Bon Iver, Hayley Williams, Tyler, The Creator, and Wet Leg. In Best Alternative Music Performance, they beat out Bon Iver (“Everything Is Peaceful Love”), Hayley Williams (“Parachute”), TURNSTILE (“SEEIN’ STARS”), and Wet Leg (“Mangetout”).
In her review of Songs of a Lost World, Elise Soutar wrote:
“To directly compare Songs of a Lost World to another Cure album—just as a barometer of quality compared to more familiar corners of the back catalog—is to misunderstand its purpose in the band’s canon. If Robert Smith, on the brink of turning 30, made his masterpiece lined with hope’s starlit glimmer on Disintegration and howled to emerge from the drug-fueled, claustrophobic paranoia of Pornography in his early twenties, Songs of a Lost World is tired of flailing, having no time for ripping at the seams of his life’s work to look for further meaning. The shaky hand that scribbled the line ‘It doesn’t matter if we all die’ belongs to an artist who now knows there’s never been a statement further from the truth, re-reading Ernest Dowson’s poem ‘Dregs’ until his eyes go weak and begging loved ones to fight for his place in their life while they still can.
Confronted with the deaths of multiple family members and a world crashing around him, Robert Smith can’t simply ‘return to form.’ He’s metamorphosed into a new form that suits both our larger societal moment and his own meditations on existence. He and the band have made a better album as a result. There are two elements which make up the quintessential Cure recording, both of which are present here. The first is expressive, sweeping instrumentals—which Perry Bamonte, Jason Cooper and Reeves Gabrels, Simon Gallup and Roger O’Donnell craft and deliver with aplomb on opener ‘Alone.’
There are moments of restraint to underpin orchestral passages, but these opulent soundscapes continue to be so central to the band’s sound, say, post-1985 because they do so much of the heavy lifting atmospherically. There’s a reason so many Cure songs withstand the weight of these sprawling introductions they’re so fond of, why our diminished attention spans still don’t seem to feel the time pass when we’re locked into the emotive swirl of sound. If you believe Smith’s claim that the band will cease to exist after its 50th anniversary, giving the Cure about four years’ time to release however much more material they supposedly have ready to go, Songs of a Lost World will be an album we’ll have to re-contextualize a few times over.
Then again, Robert Smith has famously threatened to blow the band up whenever he wraps up a Cure project, so we may all be prepping for the next few years of goodbyes in vain. Yet, there will never be a time when a song centering his voice won’t be welcome—all worth it for an avalanche of guitars clearing the aisles for that voice to sing, ‘Promise you’ll be with me in the end.’ The words may not be comforting, but with our hands on Songs of a Lost World after so much time away, you’ve never been more glad it’s him saying them.”
Follow along with our winners list here.