It’s time to get back to my favorite decade. For the month of March, I’ll be looking back at some of my favorite jams from the 80s. These songs often came to me via MTV or the radio. NYC-area stations WDRE, WPLJ, WNEW, K-ROCK and Z100 introduced me to everything from irresistible pop confections to under-the-radar post-punk anthems. I would not be who I am today if it weren’t for the 80s. It was the decade when I discovered music can be a truly powerful thing. #31DaysOf80sSongs
In my opinion, this is where the golden age of The Cure began. A string of early albums (Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Pornography) had exceptional moments. But The Head on the Door is where it all came together. The sound was full, now featuring a quintet: Robert Smith who wrote all the songs, Lol Tolhurst on keys, Porl Thompson as a multi-instrumentalist, Simon Gallup laying down the bass lines and Boris Williams on drums. The album is tight from start to finish – and one of the standouts appears midway through Side B: “A Night Like This”.
Probably one of my all-time favorite Cure jams, “A Night Like This” is a prime example of the band’s expertise in musical layering, where each instrumentalist finds his own unique territory and no one is stepping into another’s territory. Yet, the power of The Cure is that the songs are so incredibly cohesive. The layers all come together. In this Head On the Door classic, Tolhurst’s iconic chords on the keys fade in first and luring us in. Smith and Porl spin these gorgeous, intricate webs on their guitars. These riffs are the bedrock of the song, not the rhythm section, which becomes the most prominent aspect of the track. Gallup’s bass lines are perhaps the most memorable aspect of the song, and Williams matches Gallup’s heavy imprint on the drum set. On the studio version, session contributor Ron Howe blasts out a sax solo for the ages. One of the most epic concerts I’ve ever been to was The Cure at MSG in 2016 – “A Night Like This” sounded as sharp and relevant as it was 30 years prior.
“Say goodbye on a night like this if it's the last thing we ever do.”