(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Fri 31 October 2025 11:00, UK
From Macbeth to a picture by Edvard Munch to Portuguese wine, the English rock band is definitely not short of inspiration material. The Cure’s songs have so much depth that many stop at listening, but there’s a lot to be discovered between the lines.
The poetic magnetism in the band’s lyrics is no secret, but it was brought to the world’s attention when frontman Robert Smith discussed his inspiration for The Cure’s 2024 single ‘Alone’ on the band’s official YouTube Channel. “I was writing it, it wasn’t poetic, and suddenly I discovered this and I thought, ‘That’s it, that’s what’s been bugging me,’ because I knew what the song was supposed to be about,” he said about Ernest Dowson’s poem ‘Dregs’.
Starting with the leading song of the beloved 1989 studio album Disintegration, the eponymous track makes reference to the British poet Brian Patten and his poem ‘Party Piece’. The first verse calls the poem in by name, “As bit by bit it starts the need, to just let go my party piece,” before doing a dazzling job of capturing its hedonistic disintegration.
Patten’s “among the woodbines and guinness stains” becomes “Stains on the carpet and stains on the scenery” in ‘Disintegration’, as the stolen scene of debauchery frames that of a broken relationship. The poem has a taste of unforgotten nostalgia that taints the song’s lyrics and gifts it with a scent of doom since its opening notes.
The poem that inspired The Cure’s ‘How Beautiful You Are’ from Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me starts with the following line: “Oh! You want to know why I hate you today.”
This isn’t contemporary revisionism of political speeches, but the work of Charles Baudelaire’s poem, ‘Through The Eyes Of The Poor’. Many lines come directly from the body of the poem, since they do such a literal job of conveying the dismay of lovers diverging: “And promised to each other, That we’d always think the same, And dreamed that dream, To be two souls as one.”
The immaculate homage to the poem invites one to think which one was written first, and which inspired the other. One thing is certain: The Crawley crew and the French poet and essayist may have captured vastly different times, but both had experienced a loss of faith in love. Baudelaire concludes with “So hard is it to understand one another…even between people who are in love,” with the song’s closing line to match: “That no one ever knows or loves another.”
And for a not-so-little-known third, ‘Birdmad Girl’ by The Cure is a song inspired by a Dylan Thomas poem, ‘Love in the Asylum’ – a classic that was impossible not to name. Both discuss themes of insanity and the intense love attached to it, while dismantling stigma on mental illness. The track is home to the band’s most cryptic lyrics, leaning into the psychedelic feel built up throughout the album The Top.
One of the most famed lines of the Welsh poet’s portfolio is brought back to life in this track: from “the first vision that set fire to the stars” into “try to talk, The sky goes red”. The Cure’s acknowledgement of Thomas’ artistic achievement is a pleasure to listen to – never has a poem been brought to life as the sky of ‘Birdmad Girl’.
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