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Robert Smith has suggested that The Cure could call it a day in just a few years, as they prepare to release their new album, Songs of a Lost World.
The English singer appeared in a rare and lengthy filmed interview with the BBC’s Matt Everitt, in which he opened up about his songwriting process, his fascination with mortality, and how he almost called time on The Cure back in 2018.
In the conversation, which is available in full on the band’s official website, Smith said he anticipated that the band would be playing regularly in support of their new music from autumn 2025, as he looked towards their next anniversary in 2029.
“I”m 70 in 2029,” he said, “and that’s the 50th anniversary of the first Cure album [1979’s Three Imaginary Boys], and that’s it. That really is it – if I make it that far – that’s it.”
He continued: “In the intervening time I’d like us to include playing concerts as part of the overall plan of what we’re gonna do. Because I’ve loved it, the last 10 years of playing shows have been the best 10 years of being in the band… it pisses all over the other 30-odd years, it’s been great.”
In 2019, the rock band headlined British Summer Time festival in Hyde Park, London, to rave reviews and a rapturous reception from fans, for their 40th anniversary celebrations.
The setlist, comprising 29 songs, featured favourites such as “Just Like Heaven” and back-to-back renditions of “Friday I’m in Love” and “Close to Me”.
In a five-star review, The Independent called it a “perfect set” and noted how Smith seemed delighted by the reception and joked about the sweltering July heat at odds with his goth get-up: “It’s taking all my energy not to dissolve,” he said.
Later playing the opening bars of “Friday I’m in Love”, he remarked: “If you’d asked me then what I thought I’d be doing in 40 years time, I couldn’t have told you it was this.”
“I thought that the Hyde Park show would be it, I thought that was the end of The Cure,” Smith, 65, revealed in his interview with Everitt.
“I went into it thinking… I didn’t plan it, but I had a sneaky feeling that this was gonna be it. And it was only because it was such a great day and such a great response and I enjoyed it so much – we suddenly got a flood of offers to headline every major European festival. Glastonbury came [calling]. And I thought, maybe it’s not the right time to stop.”
He clarified: “I wasn’t stopping because I thought, ‘I don’t wanna do it anymore,’ I just thought it’d be a nice time to stop and it allows me a few years when I’m still able to do something else, to go and do [that].
“I wasn’t that bothered, funnily enough, because I’d arranged for everything to end in 2018. So I’ve had a very different outlook to everything since then. And pretty much everyone [who] died who meant something to me died prior to 2019, [so] I felt, ‘I’ve gotta make the most of this.’”
Everitt suggested Smith might have been given the feeling of freedom that comes with a band splitting up, without actually splitting up.
Smith agreed, pointing to the band’s string of festival performances in 2019, which is also when he began working on what would become material for the new album, their first in 16 years.
It also marked the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which saw them reunite with guitarist and keys player Perry Bamonte. He joined the band on tour in 2022: “Since then it’s like another version of The Cure has gone out and played,” Smith said.
“It’s a strange sense of us evolving and changing… gradually turning into something else, all the time. I look forward to it.”
Songs of a Lost World, the new album from The Cure, is due for release on 1 November 2024.
