Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me

listen while you read

This 1987 album is nothing short of life changing. It is one of the first albums I will recommend to people, because it singlehandedly opened up Pandora's box for me. KMx3 masterfully weaves the treacherously vulnerable tracks such as The Kiss, Torture, and The Snakepit throughout the uplifting catchy bops such as Catch, Why Can't I Be You?, and Just Like Heaven. This album is very multifaceted and spotlights the versatility of The Cure with each new song. This album is technically a double LP, with too many songs to mention, so I will focus on my favorites from the first half for now. I don't think I will delve into this much detail for every album I discuss, this just happens to be one of my original favorites.

EDIT: After getting about halfway through this post, I realized nearly every song on this album is a favorite about which I could talk extensively. I made the executive decision to cut about half of them for the sake of my own time. With that in mind, this album still has zero skips and I implore you to listen from front to back. The absent songs will be listed as honorable mentions at the bottom. Feel free to comment on them!

  The Kiss

Absolutely a headphones required listen. The nearly 4-minute-long intro pulses and grows without losing my attention. God, it's truly hypnotic how Simon Gallup's bassline pulls you in. By the time Robert Smith's wailing vocals cut through the trance like a knife, you barely notice how many minutes have lapsed in this throbbing introduction. The first lines immediately beg the album title, but I think my favorite line of the verse is "Just-just love me love me love me; you nail me to the floor and push my guts all inside ou-ou-out!!!" I've always loved how Smith repeats "just, just love me love me love me." The second "just" tickles my brain.The guitar swells in the lines following, masterfully creating a terrifying yet psychedelic outcry that peaks around the 4:30 mark. There's about a minute and a half after the vocals end of pure haunting rhythm. 

  FUN FACT!!!! 

This is the Cure's seveth album, with a cover designed by Andy Vella, who often photographed the band and designed all of their previous album covers starting with the album Faith. Here is his website. The lips pictured are in fact Smith's lips. Apparently, Vella experimented with the type placement while on the way to the airport to meet up with the band for final design adjustments. He had placed the hand-lettered text on a white transparent sheet as an overlay and moved it around the album art to iterate. I suppose the taxi jolted with a hardbreak, and he ended up placing the text in the top middle. Smith approved! 

  Catch

This is the second song on the album, and it is honestly sooo underrated! It's a beautiful poppy love song with a very catchy (no pun intended) hook. The instrumental is very understated, leading with a drum beat and meandering string melody. This song easily gets stuck in my head the most out of this album, and in an alternate universe it charted above Just Like Heaven. Maybe. My favorite lyric is "sometimes we would spend the night, just rolling about on the floor; And I remember, even though it felt soft at the time, I always used to wake up sore." 

  Torture

Dare I say the gothest song on the album? Lyrically, it captures many gothic motifs. I mean, come on, "hanging like this, like a vampire bat" is an obvious motif. However, it's pretty reductive to mention only that lyric when the song is jam packed with dramatic imagery. Lines about skin so tight it screams, one more treacherous night spent with you, and being tortured by every small movement. If you want an utterly painful song you cannot help but dance to, look no further. However, if you baulk at synth brass... STEER CLEAR! it's a common reoccurance throughout this song. Having not lived through the 80s, though, it isn't as grating to my ears. Bonus points to Simon Gallup for his propulsive and unrelenting rhythm driving the song forward. 

 

If Only Tonight We Could Sleep?

 This is more of my friend Grace's favorite than my own, but I can admit my own blind spots. The first time listening to this track "made me feel tranquil... almost like I was sinking into blankets or a deep mattress," Grace says. I always thought of the desert level on New Super Mario Bros when listening to this introduction. It's a perfect tempo change after the previous song before we delve into the next one. 

Why Can't I Be You?

  This is probably top 3 of this album for me. Easily a favorite karaoke song. Ooh!! I love the intro. This is what I like to call an instant dance classic. It just makes you wanna get up and groove with a smile. They played this at the Numbers Club in Houston last time I went, and it was a complete blast. "You make me make me make me make me hungry again!!" It's truly difficult to single out one line because they are all quotable. Even the word "angelicate" alone is quite the earworm. I will list my favorite lines:

"I'll eat you all up, or I'll just hug you to death," I love the way Smith sings the words up, hug, and death here. Definite ear-itchers. 

"I'm smitten, I'm bitten, I'm hooked, I'm cooked, I'm stuck like glue," The echo repeating the lines right after Smith says them make them a little harder to understand, but it is so fun to say once you know the lines! 

"Everything you do is simply dreeaaammyy," Okay, i know that the previous lines all happened in quick succession. But THAT is a testament to this song! The transcendent way his voice lilts on the word dreamy exemplifies word painting, which is always a fun technique. I love when the lyrics are delivered like the concept they represent. I think the most obvious example of this would be in the Ring of Fire, when Johnny Cash sings "down, down, down (as the flames got higher)," with his pitch descending on the word down and lilting on the word higher. 

Anyways, I think that's enough gloating for now. Next song!

How Beautiful You Are

This song was mentioned in detail in Lol Tolhurst's book, Goth: A History. It is based on a 1869 poem by Charles Baudelaire, entitled "The Eyes of the Poor." It begins with the lines: "Oh! You want to know why I hate you today. It wil undoubtedly be less easy for you to understand than it will be for me to explain, for you are, I believe, the most beautiful example of feminine impermeability one could ever encounter." Honestly, this poem is totally beautiful line by line, and I highly suggest you read it in full. If that's too large a request, I implore you to read this article which more articulately links the two works. This is another torturously beautiful yet catchy song, with lyrics and instrumental that keeps on giving. The story of a humbling parallel between Smith and a gorgeous lover across a homeless man and his child. In the end, Smith realizes that he and his lover do not in fact think the same when she asks him to shoo away the enamored father and son. 10/10, no notes.

Just Like Heaven

I suppose I include this track out of obligation after skipping past The Snakepit. It is an easy song to put people on to The Cure, absolutely easy to fall in love with. It also carries an equally enchanting backstory; it's hard to resist a song devoted to Smith's high school sweetheart and future wife! He paints an illustrative image of them standing on the seashore, recalling a recent excursion with her. Special shoutout to the lines "Daylight licked me into shape / I must've been asleep for days / and moving lips to breathe her name, I opened up my eyes / and found myself alone, alone alone above a raging sea that stole the only girl I loved / and drowned her deep inside of me," 

Hot Hot Hot!!!

I think this will be my conclusion to this post, unfortunately. This song carries some of Smith's most interesting vocals, with the distinct opening in another language I think they call British crying out: "She may be the face I can't forget," quoting the song She by Charles Aznavour. This song reminds me the most of their later works compared to the rest of the album, and I think it would fit really well on Wild Mood Swings or something. It's swanky, it's funky, it's fun, and it's addictive. I love the way Smith growls "hey hey hey!" It's easily another classic karaoke song. Yeah, I like it when the lightning strikes.