I’m not sure if there’s a band that I can claim as my favorite of all time, because the reality is I have a different favorite every day. This process of choosing one favorite over all others seems futile. But, for me, The Cure, is about as close as it gets. For me, their music is irreplaceable. There are things that I feel when I put on a Cure record that I can’t experience with anything else. For the month of June, I hope to share some of this as a I cover a different Cure song each day – counting down from #30 to #1. And, in this case, I have no qualms stating my #1. #30DaysofTheCure
U.S. original release: Disintegration (1989) - Track 12
Ranking: 24
This is the second song from Disintegration to appear on my top 30 and the final track on the record. Cure fans have many favorites on Disintegration, but what makes the album so special is its song sequence and cohesiveness. It is indeed one of those albums that you have to listen to all the way through to appreciate how great it is. Disintegration hovers in a middling malaise for its first five tracks, then starts to ramp up with “Lullaby” and hits its emotional peak with “Fascination Street”. From there, tracks 8-12 take the listener on a downward spiral, deeper and deeper into despair, culminating in the closing track, “Untitled”.
To simply cast this song as a “doom and gloom” dirge is to overlook the humanity of its lyrics. “Untitled” is not about misery, it’s a song about regret. A song that pinpoints that utterly hopeless feeling of things left unsaid with no time to do it all over again. In his brief stint with The Cure, Roger O’Donnell plays the keys like a funeral procession, the final nail in the coffin. The sound is much more akin to an accordion than the more common grand and symphonic tones of The Cure. The downward spiral on “Untitled” occurs over and over again with Williams’ cascading drum tumbles. How rare it is to hear a song that’s seemingly lifeless, but actually full of life.
“Never quite said what I wanted to say to you. Never quite managed the words to explain to you. Never quite knew how to make them believable.”