Happy 35th Anniversary to The Cure’s seventh studio album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, originally released May 25, 1987.
No one could’ve anticipated the vast whirling wonder that is Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. Not even The Cure’s frontman Robert Smith.
Not yet a decade had passed since their 1979 debut album Three Imaginary Boys arrived, but the 27-year-old mastermind behind The Cure had already released six studio LPs, a live album and two compilations of singles and B-sides—not to mention a side project called The Glove and a slew of other songs.
From post-punk to grievous goth to synthy pop, the young band from Crawley, an industrial town just south of London, had ambled through a stunning array of styles and lineups in just seven years, all engineered by one luminescent thing: Smith’s unrelenting vision.
The Cure’s bleak trilogy of the early ‘80s—Seventeen Seconds (1980), Faith (1981) and Pornography (1982)—had lulled fans into believing that their depressing, oft-dour demeanor was all that existed. But then out toppled the weird, whimsical worlds of Japanese Whispers (1983) and The Top (1984) with more quirky, up-tempo numbers, which raised the brow of many a mascara-mussed eye.
The Head on the Door (1985) then swung forth—a seeming sea of neon lights in what was once an eternity of night. Although it confounded some, it captivated loads more and catapulted The Cure to unforeseen, chart-topping levels of success.
Now, with Smith well-established as wholly unpredictable, fans, critics and band members alike all looked curiously to whatever strange delight was to reveal itself next.
No one needed to wait long. The ideas continued to effuse from Smith with enviable ease. In March 1986—a few short months following the release of The Head on the Door and its accompanying 50-plus-date tour—Smith was revved up, rearing to record again.
To catalyze festivities, he debuted a burgeoning set of home demos for bandmates bassist Simon Gallup, multi-instrumentalist Porl Thompson, keyboardist Lol Tolhurst and drummer Boris Williams. Although the roster remained consistent from The Head on the Door, Smith was never one to repeat former formulas, no matter how fantastic the result.
Two years prior, The Cure had released The Top, the closest Smith has ever come to a solo effort—the anomalous aftermath following the fallout with best friend Gallup at the end of the Pornography tour. The self-contained experience nearly decimated The Cure, causing Smith to realize just how much he needed the group. With The Head on the Door, he’d reassembled the band to dazzling avail. With this next album, he’d take things a step further still, venturing deeper into the unfamiliar.
While The Top and The Head on the Door had incorporated new instruments, Smith now also invited new points of view, encouraging the other Cure members to participate from the get-go. And with the exception of Tolhurst, who was suffering from unchecked alcohol addiction, they were all more than keen to collaborate.
Following Smith’s spring preview, The Cure started to rehearse some 20 new demos at London’s Beethoven Street Studios. Although touring to promote their just-released singles compilation Standing on a Beach (1986), The Cure were also crafting creations for the forthcoming album, tentatively titled “One Million Virgins.” Upon completion of their American Beach Party Tour and the European festival circuit that August (culminating in the French show that provided the delicious fodder for In Orange!), the band could finally focus full attention on the new record.
Marking another Cure first, the band recorded their seventh studio L, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, outside England, in Provence, France. Piling on the initial sketches that Smith had originally compiled, the other members put forth their own submissions. Together, the five-piece sifted through dozens of songs, carefully evaluating each one before eventually selecting 30 kiss-worthy contenders.
In Ten Imaginary Years, a detailed recounting of the band’s first decade, Smith reflected, “I wrote ‘Head On The Door’ on my own at home and the group interpreted it like an orchestra would, but this time I insisted that the others give me cassettes of their own music and I got six or seven songs from each one. Boris even made a tape of some weird vampire drumming! Everyone really wanted to be involved.”
Huddled at Studio Miraval, which was erected on the vineyard-laced estate by jazz pianist Jacques Loussier (birth site of Pink Floyd’s The Wall), the ruddy, residential recording space only added to the enchantment of the opulent, otherworldly ambiance (“You’re such a strange girl / I think you come from another world”). Under sunny autumnal skies, the members of The Cure partook of freely flowing wine and brandy with their girlfriends and friends, savoring the kaleidoscopic scenery.
In the liner notes for the 2006 Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me reissue, Smith fondly recalled the revelry: “We’d never worked in a residential studio before, and we immediately fell in love with it all. It was like being on a very weird family holiday!”
This relaxed environment proved ideal for not just merriment, but music-making. In a handful of weeks, The Cure fashioned nearly 30 songs. They hadn’t set out to divine a double album and were more than aware of the stigma surrounding such (usually ill-fated) efforts. Yet, they were so prolific, a single album just wouldn’t do.
“We had completed so many tracks and were starting to have very animated discussions about which ones should be on the album,” Smith explained in the liner notes. “Trying to squeeze stuff onto a single 45-minute record would have resulted in a release that was either too ‘poppy’ or too ‘atmospheric’ – neither of which would have been quite right.”
Amidst the richly lush realms of Miraval, the words to Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me practically dripped from Smith’s pen. The luxury of the double album released the pressure, affording him the space to produce without penalty.
In Ten Imaginary Years, Smith elucidated, “I wrote words for 23 songs and they were among the best I’d ever written. I astounded myself because usually I get stuck but, this time, I just sat down every day to write and it was easy. Normally I’m struggling to polish the words in a London studio where there’s a lot of pressure but in Miraval I knew we had enough music for a double album and I thought ‘If I can’t come up with enough words, we’ll just make it a single album’ so there was no real worry.”
But, while the words came easy, enlivening them with vocals required far more vigor. And, unfortunately, The Cure’s time at Miraval was up. So, with just 10 vocal tracks done, the band vacated the pretty premises of Provence and Smith wandered west with co-producer Dave Allen and manager Chris Parry to Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas to continue putting final touches on the album.
However, while Smith made some noticeable progress, including impulsively enlisting a random saxophonist to play on “Hey You!” and “Icing Sugar,” the overall island recording experience was lackluster. He missed the camaraderie of Miraval and absconded to Belgium, where he could begin anew in a more familiar European environment.
In January 1987, at Brussels’ ICP Studios, Smith finally completed work on the whopping 18-track, 74-plus-minute Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me—a true magnum opus. With months of warmth surrounding the varied sound, the time for wintry darkness was overdue.
This was The Cure, after all.
And yet, for all the nascent-career and even current perceptions of The Cure being punishingly grim, their discography (even back in 1987) tells a very different story. Where The Head on the Door certainly showed a broad range of emotions and styles, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, in part because of its collective songwriting approach, demonstrates the band’s diverse aesthetic in spades.
Brimming with hunger, verve and passion, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me shows The Cure desperate for connection, having freshly emerged from more insular inspection. Perhaps having fended off—at least temporarily—inner demons in previous albums, they were ready to take on the entity of the other.
Even the title—the repetition of a verb and desire for attention—suggests not just a longing, but a fire for life, love and lust.
Album opener “The Kiss” thrusts right into it, delivering on the promise of Smith’s crimson lips pursed atop the record’s cover. Daring, aggressive and unlike any Cure song that had ever come before, “The Kiss” offers a wild entrance into a tempestuous world. After nearly four minutes of bruising bass and squalling guitar, Smith wails out the first words of the album, “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me! / Your tongue is like poison / So swollen it fills up my mouth.” It’s immediate and intense, but not exactly the sensual sentiments of a lover. (Just where are you taking us, Robert?)
And it only gets better: “Love me love me love me / You nail me to the floor / And push my guts all inside out.” (And, for the uninitiated among us, it’d be fair to wonder, is this what happens when goth meets romance?)
“Get it out get it out get it out / get your fucking voice / out of my head…” (Or maybe outtakes from Pornography or even The Top mistakenly slipped through?)
And in less than a minute after the carnal combat of “The Kiss” commences, it’s over, with Smith repeating in more of a murmur: “I never wanted any of this / I wish you were dead.”
Ah yes, precisely the bludgeoning affection I signed on for—and then equally without warning “Catch,” in all its exquisite dreaminess, rolls in. Soft, supple and suggestive, the dainty tune is the second shortest on the album, but yanks on that youthful wistfulness which whispers inside you for a lifetime (“And I used to sometimes try to catch her / But never even caught her name”).
The pairing of those two extremes sets the pace across the transfixing expanse, with punchier tracks tripping into tremulous bliss. Smith has always been one to lend meticulous attention to track listings, but his song sequencing on Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me is nothing short of genius.
I’d be lying if I said I remembered my first time hearing the album in its entirety. Undoubtedly, like many, my introduction came through radio-friendly singles “Why Can’t I Be You?” “Hot Hot Hot!!!” and “Just Like Heaven.” The latter of which is the most perfectly romantic pop song ever put to tape—a danceable, dizzying seaside tribute to Mary Poole, Smith’s soon-to-be wife. Even the mainstream masses took to it. With “Just Like Heaven,” The Cure reached the U.S. Top 40 for the very first time.
What I recall more readily are the many times I sought solace in Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me during my freshman year of college—one of the more trying times in my life. I’d lay on my dorm room bed with my headphones, digging my fists into my eyes under a reading lamp, recreating the rouge glow that permeates the album. Feeling the weepy wetness slide down my fingers, I’d cling to “One More Time,” “A Thousand Hours” and “All I Want.”
Barely 18, I craved so badly to be held to the sky—and, musically, The Cure was the closest I could come to that cradle: “So take me in your arms / And lift me like a child / And hold me up so high / And never let me go.”
Although those songs were my saviors in my more aching moments, I truly adored the whole of the album through and through. Through Babble, the fan-run Cure mailing list, I’d somehow acquired keyboardist Roger O’Donnell’s email address. Although he didn’t play on Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, he joined for The Kissing Tour and was with the band in 1996 when I tipsily decided to write him. I’d requested “Like Cockatoos” and was granted its grandly murky beauty on August 6, 1996—the second night I beheld my favorite band live. (I doubt my email had anything to do with the unexpectedly magical occurrence, but Roger, if you’re reading, I thank you immeasurably just the same.)
Much more recently, when I first started seeing the gent who would become my boyfriend, I thrillingly fulfilled his request for a Cure mix of my most beloved tracks. And while I spent untold weeks deliberating the playlist order (yes, I realize I’m no Robert), I needed nary a second to determine my Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me era selections. Sumptuous, exotic and woozy, “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep,” “The Snakepit” and “Breathe” (a “Just Like Heaven” B-side) immediately jumped to mind. They’re not just longstanding favorites; their evocative sound sends me awash in seductive reverie, lyrics notwithstanding.
I’ve long maintained The Cure have a song for every feeling, and where I gravitate toward most of their albums to amplify a specific mood, the eclectic, yet cohesive Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me intoxicates me no matter my frame of mind.
It’s a tour de force that surprised upon arrival, and still draws marvel. I’d plead, “Don’t let it end…” as Smith is wont to do, except we all know the concept of disintegration can somehow make an ever more lasting impression.
Enjoyed this article? Read more about The Cure here:
Faith (1981) | Wish (1992) | Wild Mood Swings (1996)
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