Grain of sand –
«Robert Smith kicks ass!»
In a world of bullies, the purpurine lips of the singer of The Cure are a call for kisses.
Published today at 8:16 a.m.
Robert Smith on stage in 2022.
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“It doesn’t matter if we all die,” Robert Smith promises in “One Hundred Years.” We can criticize the singer of The Cure for a slight tendency towards exaggeration, which the most miro of observers will have detected in the greedy joy with which the sixty-year-old dabs lipstick on his lips and puts his hair in the microwave, every morning at the same time as he butters his toast. For forty years, only his wife, Mary, has had the chance to surprise Robert without mascara, and even then, nothing is less certain.
Coming from a Nervalian romantic who has sung since 1978 about the ephemeral and vain nature of existence, the endurance of his group is an oxymoron. It is also the only good news of the fall. We no longer believed it, because Robert Smith also quite exaggerated with the schedule and the nerves of his fans, renewing every Christmas his promise to publish “next year” the famous “long-awaited new record by The Cure” since 2008. But here it is: «Songs of a Lost World» was finally released on October 30.
Two weeks later, it was number 1 in sales almost everywhere, particularly in Switzerland, a feat that the Crawley group had never accomplished before, its distributor tells us! Even in the mid-80s, when Robert Smith displayed his still fine but no less painted face on the walls of all teenage bedrooms and when he chased the parents to the Michel Drucker set while dancing “Why Can’t I Be You”, even at the height of their pop glory, The Cure had never climbed to the top of the Swiss charts. And that feels good too.
In a world of deaf brutes and self-satisfied imbeciles, the strange character of Robert Smith becomes a very paradoxical symbol of normality, a reassuring fetish like the shaggy, patched but soft cuddly toy that we have never been able to bring ourselves to throw away. We put it in the back of a cupboard, we know it’s there. When you bring it out for a new dance, it radiates a total authenticity that cancels out any ridicule.
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Better: in front of him, it is the artifices of the media circus which become grotesque, such as this famous sequence where Smith, picked up cold by a facilitator in the middle of a jubilant rise, in no way attempts to parody occasional excitement. Already in 1998, the creators of “South Park” saw him as the only human being capable of saving the planet – in this case threatened by a monstrous avatar of Barbra Streisand. “Robert Smith kicks ass!” Cartman rejoiced, which in French means he’s really great. We challenge anyone to prove otherwise.
Francois Barras is a journalist in the cultural section. Since March 2000, he has been recounting current, past and perhaps future music.More info
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