bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Mark Mccord

Seventeen Seconds 
The Cure
Fiction
If one word can sum up the career of The Cure, it's claustrophobia.
It's there in singer Robert Smith's tensely restrained vocals, the emotional wails that fight for expression. It's there in the lyrics, sparse, dark and tightly contained. And it's there in the videos, the band enclosed in a wardrobe or bound in a nightmare of spider webs.
But of all the British band's songs over more than three decades of outstanding recordings, it's there in A Forest, the haunting chart debut of 1981 and standout track from the alternative rockers' sophomore album, Seventeen Seconds.
Not only did the song announce the band to the wider music-loving world, it also set the tone for their subsequent work, establishing them at the forefront of one of the post-punk era's more creative threads: goth punk.
Before Seventeen Seconds, The Cure were just a dark-pop novelty. Based in the dreary London satellite town of Crawley, they were hardly of rock pedigree. Smith came from a lower middle-class background, the sort of grounding that produced few rock stars, and emerged as the frontman of The Cure as the band graduated through various name and musical changes in the mid- to late 1970s.
Their debut album, Three Imaginary Boys, was notable for its jaunty pop, but otherwise unremarkable although its American version, renamed Boys Don't Cry, did include a title single that became a hit upon re-release a decade later.
A tour supporting Siouxsie and the Banshees made a deep impression on Smith, who, upon returning home, wrote the lion's share of Seventeen Seconds in songs that owed more than a nod to Sioux's brooding, swirling rock aesthetic. The album was lyrically and musically a radical departure. While Boys Don't Cry had been a straightforward guitar-punk record, its successor was far more experimental, moody and gloomy.
Synths and drum machines supplemented the band's sound, while Smith's wordplay had become fractured and disjointed, giving the songs a sense of vulnerability and loss. The new mood is best encapsulated in A Forest. At just under six minutes, it wasn't expected to perform well as a single. But A Forest is difficult to ignore: it doesn't so much grab listeners as lure them into its eerie tangle of doom-laden bass, chilling synths and echoing guitar.
Harnessing Smith's Siouxsie-inspired love of new keyboard technology, it opens with a low, brooding monotone synth echo before a distant guitar jangles. The incessant bass line then kicks in and the song begins to envelop the listener. As a masterclass in emotional textures, it's unsurprising A Forest has been a permanent fixture in The Cure's live set for 30 years. Long may it remain so.
Charlie Carter


Rewind, album: 'Seventeen seconds' by The Cure

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}If one word can sum up the career of The Cure, it's claustrophobia.

If one word can sum up the career of The Cure, it's claustrophobia.