Apparently the reason that The Cure’s 14th studio album, 2024’s Songs Of A Lost World, took so long to come out was because it took a number of years for frontman and leader Robert Smith to lay down his vocals onto the songs. As the story goes, most of the backing tracks were ready to go half a decade before, calling out for Robert to press record, open his mouth and start singing. As Roy Keane might say, “That’s his job”.
The funny thing is, Smith seems to have had zero issues in adding his voice to other people’s work over the years in which The Cure’s own catalogue wasn’t being added to, with quite a few of those coming in the years after those instrumentals from Songs Of A Lost World were just sitting there. Imagine what was being said on the secret WhatsApp group they have behind his back… “He’s done what with Gorillaz?”. But Smith did get there eventually with his vocal contributions on Songs Of A Lost World and there’s no denying it was worth the wait, a stellar addition to the gothic alt-rock-sometimes-pop’s back catalogue. That he did get there in the end means we can also celebrate some of those guest vocal spots without the spectre of his own group’s material remaining unfinished. Some very good gear in here – and yes, there is a side-effect that songs will start sounding exactly like The Cure if you get Robert Smith to sing on your song. Here’s some of his best...
The Twilight Sad – There’s A Girl In The Corner
A bit of a controversial one to begin with one, maybe, because this version of the Scottish indie-rockers’ moody 2014 epic is actually Smith covering the whole thing by himself. But he did do it to appear on one of their singles, so leave me alone. It’s absolutely masterful (as is the original), Smith stripping out the gothic reverb of the original and crafting a tightly-wound 80s electro-tinged gem.
Chvrches – How Not To Drown
Whoa, I’ve started pretty Scottish-heavy. But there’s a lot of them out there – the Scots love Robert Smith and Robert Smith loves the Scots. His friendship with Mogwai, for example, goes back years. Unfortunately, Stuart Braithwaite’s post-rock crew have never had him on a track otherwise I’d line them up next. The synth-pop dynamos Chvrches have, enlisting Smith for a special take on their 2021 banger How Not To Drown. It was an especially poignant team-up for singer Lauren Mayberry. “When it was just me singing on it, it was clearly about my disillusionment with experiences that we've had in the last several years,” Mayberry told this writer a few years ago. “But when Robert Smith, who is one of the most inspirational people to us as writers and to this band, came on it, it went from ‘Oh, so it's a song about being disillusioned about music and the industry and not being sure that you wanted to do it anymore because you it took too much of a toll on your soul’ to ‘It’s great, it's my favourite!’.”
Billy Corgan – toLOVEsomebody
Billy Corgan seems to have some very murky feelings about what he got up to whilst Smashing Pumpkins were on hiatus – aka split up, hated each other – in the early-to-mid 00s. He’s pulled both his Zwan project and 2005 solo album TheFutureEmbrace from streaming platforms, but you can find this haunting, shoegaze-y duet of the Bee Gees’ classic with Robert Smith out there if you look hard enough. I mean, you don’t even need to look hard, we’ve pasted it right here for you...
Gorillaz – Strange Timez
It was the law of averages that Smith would appear on a song with Damon Albarn’s virtual band at some point. There are, after all, only so many singers in the world and Albarn had already gone through quite a few of them by the point of this 2020 hook-up. But who better to supply vocals on a driving indie-pop groove on a song about a discombobulating world in the year of lockdown than Smith, the king of making isolation sound fun.
Blink-182 – All Of This
One of the most likeable things about the very likeable Smith is that his is a life seemingly made up of decisions not based on what he thinks might look cool. There are certain veterans out there who might turn their nose up at a collaboration with serial pranksters Blind-182, especially if their career, as Smith’s is, has been built out of profoundly serious songs. But that didn’t stop Smith hopping on this standout from their self-titled 2003 album. Admittedly this wasn’t one of Blink’s dick joke pieces, but a wistful pop number that Smith makes his own.
Faithless – Spiders, Crocodiles & Kryptonite
Honestly, who else but Smith could veer from cameos that take in indie-rock, synth-pop, punk-pop and dance titans? On this atmospheric song from the rave giants’ 2006 album To All New Arrivals, Smith pops up alongside a sample of himself taken from The Cure’s classic Lullaby.
65Daysofstatic – Come To Me
As previously explained, Robert Smith will appear on any song he damn wants to (as long he’s invited, that is, as far as I’m aware, he has never ambushed a studio unexpectedly and insisted to sing on a tune). Here he is on this rhythmic whirlwind of a track from 2010 by post-rock experimentalists 65Daysofstatic. Smith’s voice veers in and out of the devilish sonic maelstrom.
Crosses – Girls Float Boys Cry
And so to Smith’s most recent guest spot, adding his trademark forlorn emotional depth to this 2023 cut from Deftones frontman Chino Moreno’s Crosses project, a doomy 80s electro-goth song that sounds like it was written for a particularly sad episode of Stranger Things. “One of my favourite things about Robert Smith is his ability to really convey the sadness within a song,” Moreno said. “I thought, ‘If I can get Robert, this would be the perfect song to have him take part in’. Luckily, he obliged.”
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