Lullaby- The Cure

After the excesses of party often comes the existential dread. The day after Halloween is two days after Devils’ Night. If you’re not feeling a chill up the spine and seeing things in the periphery of your vision by now perhaps you’re not as creepy as the season would like you to be.

“I spy with my little eye… Something beginning with S”

The Cure’s Lullaby is a child’s nightmare made song. Slow, quiet and full of sickly sweet creeping about. The lush strings and plinky plonky possessed toy sound of the music only serves to highlight how quietly Robert Smith is whispering his Grimm nursery rhyme lyrics.

“On candy striped legs the Spider Man comes, softly through the shadows of the evening sun”

If that doesn’t get to the depths of your inner most child like fears and slide an icy finger up the back of your soul. Don’t worry. That doesn’t mean you’re dead. Not yet. Robert has more for you.

“Stealing past the windows of the blissfully dead, looking for the victim shivering in bed
Searching out fear in the gathering gloom and suddenly a movement in the corner of the room”

The picture this paints in the minds eye is vivid. The application of these words, this music, is delicate of touch. It’s so delicate in fact you need to remind yourself this is a rock and roll band.

Seeing The Cure on Top Of The Pops in 1989 playing Lullaby was a curious thrill. What the hell was I meant to do with this? I was a heavy metal fan who went in hard for The Cure when I first heard Lullaby. These guys were playing with the same brand of Ouija Board as Alice Cooper and The Damned. And you know how I felt about those guys.