The Essentials: Number 5

The Cure

5. The Cure -- One word: diversity. How is possible to be so dark, so eerie, so macabre and also be so upbeat, so funky and so blissful? The Cure has done this like no one else. One moment you feel a sense of overwhelming desperation about life and the world you live in. A darkness from which there is no escape. Moments later, you are twirling around in circles, dizzy with euphoria and ecstasy. From fantasy to the most dire or exhilirating human emotion, Robert Smith lyrics touch a different part of your soul with each song. And to top it off, have you ever heard another band described as "sounds like The Cure"? That's because there is no way to describe them simply or succintly. A sound as broad and unpredictable as the realms of Smith's lyrical universe with nary a creative rut. Pick an album, any album and go for a journey to somewhere you have never been before...