Why Do Radio Stations Play The Cure But Not Morrissey?

[Worm]

"Friday I'm in Love" shit.

I actually didn't mind "Friday I'm In Love". What I minded is that Robert Smith wrote it. The guy has a knack for writing some really fantastic three minute pop gems and yet he's still keeping up all these pretenses about angsty dark romanticism. I'd hear songs like that and "Just Like Heaven" or "Inbetween Days" and just want to grab him by the shoulders and say, "Look, you bastard, put down the mascara, step away from Les Fleurs du mal, marry your girlfriend, and get on with it".

My two favorite bands, Morrissey/Smiths and Joy Division/New Order, are distinguished from The Cure precisely in how their poppier stuff relates to their heavier album material. Whereas, somehow, Robert Smith made album after album of darker songs yet at the same time inexplicably managed to churn out a series of (I admit) brilliant singles designed to tear up the pop charts:

Morrissey wrote "poppy" songs for the charts that were no less challenging, artful, and miserable ("Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now") than the rest of his work that most of the public never heard. The difference between his "chart" songs and his "darker" songs is minimal.

When New Order, continuing on after Ian Curtis's death, discovered that they were pretty damn good at writing poppy disco songs, they more or less became a poppy disco band. They didn't write "Bizarre Love Triangle" and throw it on an album with a song like "New Dawn Fades".

In short, both were consistent and honest with their fans. During the three or four months when I was giving The Cure a serious shot to join the ranks of my favorite bands, snapping up albums right and left, it slowly became apparent that Smith was just a gifted songwriter who had a knack for style-- but only style. I never believed him. His songs never seemed honest to me. The Cure made some admirable music but none of it seems remotely sincere.

 

[Not Right in the Head]

I actually didn't mind "Friday I'm In Love". What I minded is that Robert Smith wrote it. The guy has a knack for writing some really fantastic three minute pop gems and yet he's still keeping up all these pretenses about angsty dark romanticism. I'd hear songs like that and "Just Like Heaven" or "Inbetween Days" and just want to grab him by the shoulders and say, "Look, you bastard, put down the mascara, step away from Les Fleurs du mal, marry your girlfriend, and get on with it".

My two favorite bands, Morrissey/Smiths and Joy Division/New Order, are distinguished from The Cure precisely in how their poppier stuff relates to their heavier album material. Whereas, somehow, Robert Smith made album after album of darker songs yet at the same time inexplicably managed to churn out a series of (I admit) brilliant singles designed to tear up the pop charts:

Morrissey wrote "poppy" songs for the charts that were no less challenging, artful, and miserable ("Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now") than the rest of his work that most of the public never heard. The difference between his "chart" songs and his "darker" songs is minimal.

When New Order, continuing on after Ian Curtis's death, discovered that they were pretty damn good at writing poppy disco songs, they more or less became a poppy disco band. They didn't write "Bizarre Love Triangle" and throw it on an album with a song like "New Dawn Fades".

In short, both were consistent and honest with their fans. During the three or four months when I was giving The Cure a serious shot to join the ranks of my favorite bands, snapping up albums right and left, it slowly became apparent that Smith was just a gifted songwriter who had a knack for style-- but only style. I never believed him. His songs never seemed honest to me. The Cure made some admirable music but none of it seems remotely sincere.

I somewhat agree with you, insofar as The Cure's songs don't have the same kind of emotional openness that Morrissey's do. But then again, Morrissey has very, very few peers in that department--or at least male ones (but I can think of many female examples: Joni, Tori, Suzanne Vega, Kate, Sinead). But saying that none of Bob's songs are "remotely sincere" is a bit much. "End" easily out-Morrissey's Moz's own work. I also don't have a problem with mixing pop songs with darker stuff, which is why I like Kiss Me x 3 but nobody else seems to. It does keep most Cure albums (Pornography excepted) from approaching the sublime darkness of Unknown Pleasures and Closer, but then again, those are two of the finest albums ever made and set an amazingly high bar for everyone else.

 

[nocturn0wl]

My local "alternative" station here in Phoenix will routinely play The Cure at least once a day, sometimes twice or more; however, I have never once heard a Morrissey tune. The played "How Soon Is Now" once.

Honestly, why do you suppose that is?

I don't know the answer to your question, but I have often wondered the same thing myself!

Where I used to work, we would have the 80s station playing on satellite radio, and they'd play The Cure from time to time but NEVER The Smiths. It was maddening!!!

 

[Vauxhall95]

Look I know what you are getting at. However, does "Alma Matters" really qualify as disturbing? Or "Let Me Kiss You?" I mean, I'm not talking about "All The Lazy Dykes" on heavy rotation...

-Vaux

 

[Worm]

I somewhat agree with you, insofar as The Cure's songs don't have the same kind of emotional openness that Morrissey's do. But then again, Morrissey has very, very few peers in that department--or at least male ones (but I can think of many female examples: Joni, Tori, Suzanne Vega, Kate, Sinead). But saying that none of Bob's songs are "remotely sincere" is a bit much. "End" easily out-Morrissey's Moz's own work. I also don't have a problem with mixing pop songs with darker stuff, which is why I like Kiss Me x 3 but nobody else seems to. It does keep most Cure albums (Pornography excepted) from approaching the sublime darkness of Unknown Pleasures and Closer, but then again, those are two of the finest albums ever made and set an amazingly high bar for everyone else.

Yes, it's all a matter of interpretation. Songs can sound sincere to some and not to others. I just think that Smith flirts with certain intellectual attitudes that, in my opinion, give the lie to his poppy songs. For example on "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me", the song "How Beautiful You Are" is Baudelaire set to music. I realize that Morrissey has made some powerful declarations about love in the world, but if you sing a line like "no-one ever knows or loves another" and give it emphasis like Smith does in the vocal-- well, I'm sorry, but I find that incompatible with some of the other tracks Smith wrote. I think Morrissey is much more consistent. Love exists. It just eludes him. And even when he sings "Love is a miserable lie" it's wounded innocence talking, not cold existential analysis. There's a chilly braininess about Smith's darker lyrics that seems very much at odds with the joyful songs he writes-- one side of his personality must be fake. Or both.

Again, I don't object to one artist writing both "happy" and "sad" songs (to be crude about it), but there has to be some internal consistency. I hear it in Morrissey's stuff and not in The Cure's.

Glad to know you have a high opinion of Joy Division's two studio albums. It would have been interesting to see if Curtis developed into a pop writer, as his bandmates did. I don't think he'd have done it, but you never know. As for Bernard Sumner, I will always have the utmost respect for him because he tried writing songs in Curtis's style ("Movement") and failed utterly, so he just gave up. In fact, not only did he start writing more straightforward songs about love, some of the lyrics were almost literally nonsense. That took a lot of guts.

 

[SNS22]

I do hear the Cure a bit more, but their music is more "fun" sounding- poppy. Although, at the time, they were tolerated no better than the Smiths where I lived. (as in, "you listen to what? eew.")

Surprisingly, I hear a lot of the Cure's newer stuff-anything after Disintegration, which to my mind was the last Cure album. They completely turned me off with this "Mint Car" and "Friday I'm in Love" shit. But then, everything went to hell musically for me once Grunge began. Ruined it all. 'Cept Moz.

First Came grunge then came whatever the whining of Blink 182 and their clones are called...hey let's think of a word and put a number after it..yeah that's what we'll call our band

 

[SNS22]

I don't know the answer to your question, but I have often wondered the same thing myself!

Where I used to work, we would have the 80s station playing on satellite radio, and they'd play The Cure from time to time but NEVER The Smiths. It was maddening!!!

one of the funniest things I heard was I was in my friend's car (this was about maybe 5 years ago?? and he was listening to a hip-hop station)...then at the top of the hour they had a jingle that said something about "Old School"...then they played Just Like Heaven, Panic, and I think Blue Monday....on a HIP HOP station!!!

 

[Oh my god. it's Robby!]

"That's Why People Throw Up"
(Ashley Simpson/Robert Smith)

maybe he just wants to do her?
&
i did not always dislike fat bob
then he said mean things about mozzy babie

& i still listen to them some

 

[DAnn Coulter]

maybe he just wants to do her?
&
i did not always dislike fat bob
then he said mean things about mozzy babie

& i still listen to them some

I never liked BOB as a person(ality) but the music is cool.... I listen to it but I always skip all the songs you list.
specially Lovecats (EYEROLL)

 

[Oh my god. it's Robby!]

I never liked BOB as a person(ality) but the music is cool.... I listen to it but I always skip all the songs you list.
specially Lovecats (EYEROLL)

dann, i'm not gone feud with you
try as you might make me