I'm obsessed with The Cure
I am suddenly absolutely obsessed with The Cure.
In high school, I was all over the place with my taste in music. I only listened to rap for a while, then I heard And Justice For All by Metallica and it was game over. I instantly became a metal head. My favorite band was Lamb of God, right around the time they released Ashes of the Wake and I was big into Pantera, Suicide Silence, those weird couple of records Exodus did with Rob Dukes, and all your other typical hardcore stuff like Full Blown Chaos, Atreyu, Hatebreed; the kinda shit they played on Headbanger's Ball on MTV in the mid 2000's.
Then I discovered drugs and started getting into the more psychedelic shit like Tool, Primus... I started listening to 70's stuff like Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Led Zeppelin, Grateful Dead...
I didn't get into my punk phase until my 20s but that's what I identify with most these days. Fat Wreck bands, Epitaph bands, LOTS of folk punk like Apes of the State and anything even remotely adjacent to Pat the Bunny.
I go through these autistic obsessions, you know? I find something I like and just overplay the shit out of it until I find something new.
Never gave The Cure the time of day though—until I listened to Disintegration. Jesus fucking christ. It was like that And Justice For All moment for me. Or like the first time I ever listened to The Wall or Tool's Lateralus. It just completely recalibrated my taste in music.
I don't know how their hardcore fans see it; I mean shit, for all I know this could be their equivalent to St. Anger for all I know. But I don't think it is.
The synths are cheesy, it's sappy overly emotional, depressed, hopeless love song vibes, but it's a fucking masterpiece. I don't buy anything on vinyl if it's not something I can listen to front to back. I can listen to this fucking thing on repeat all day and not get bored.
It's like when Stewie heard Anne Murray for the first time:
It's already ran its course; it's something people have loved for decades. It's like saying "holy shit, have you guys heard of this movie "Pulp Fiction‽" in the year of our lord 2026. It's been a classic with a cult following forever, but I just now Forrest Gump'd my way into it.
That's what I love about music. Pick any decade in the 20th century and beyond and you have thousands of different records to choose from. You can keep discovering old gems until you die of old age.