Robert Smith has named two songs likely to feature on the next album from The Cure.
READ MORE: The Cure – ‘Songs Of A Lost World’: a masterful reflection on loss
The band have made it clear for a while now that they’ve been sitting on a wealth of new material since 2008’s 4:13 Dream‘. Back in 2020, for instance, Smith told NME that they were hard at work on “two new albums and an hour of noise”.
While appearing as a guest on X-Posure with John Kennedy on Radio X, the ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ singer opened up further about the specific tracks that will appear on their next album, which will serve as a follow-up to their 2024 14th studio LP, ‘Songs Of A Lost World’.
“It has a couple of songs that we were playing live which didn’t make it onto ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ and it has some completely new stuff that no one’s ever heard,” he explained. “There’s three songs on it, which are slower than pretty much anything on this album. So I don’t know, it may well end up being heavier than this one.”
“Lyrically, it’s a very long way from being an upbeat album,” he continued. “It has one song of grief on it which didn’t make it onto this album, which is a very, very old song which we’ve been playing for a long, long time called ‘It Can Never Be the Same’. And I think that this next album will have that song on because I think it’s about time. It used to be called ‘Christmas Without You’.”
Robert Smith of The Cure at Ziggo Dome on November 25, 2022 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Photo by Shlomi Pinto/Getty Images)
“When I first wrote it, it was about my mum dying, but it’s mutated over the years and that’s actually turned into a really powerful live song. That would probably make it on.”
Smith went on to detail another song called ‘A Boy I Never Knew’, adding that they had “redone” the track. “I think that would probably make it on,” he said. “That’s a sad song, but in a completely different way. That’s me singing about a boy that died a million years ago. About the death of humanity before it started, I think… or something.”
The band have been playing ‘It Can Never Be The Same’ for years, including at Smith’s curated Meltdown Festival in 2018. The year after the performance, he explained to NME that it was one of 13 “leftover songs” from their 2008 album ‘4:13 Dream‘ that had been intended to be released as part of a companion album, but it was never completed because “things got in the way”.
“Although I do really like them and we did discuss re-recording them with this line-up, everyone agreed that we’d rather just do songs that we’d written with this line-up,” Smith told us at the time. “They’re both on the DVD, although I got one of the lines wrong in ‘It Can Never Be The Same’, which really pissed me off, but there we are.”
In October last year, Smith reflected on the wealth of material – including fan favourite ‘Another Happy Birthday’ aired by the band on tour last year – that didn’t feature on ‘Songs Of A Lost World’.
“For the oldest song on this album, the demo was done in 2010,” he explained. “They stretched all the way through. The bulk of them, probably five of them, have been written since 2017. Three of them: one of them was 2010, one was 2011, another was 2013 or 2014. There were so many songs to choose from.
In the same interview with Kennedy, Smith revealed that he is “already finishing” the band’s next album and teased that it can potentially receive a release as early as next summer. He also added that it includes “the saddest song” of their recent batch.
As well as the follow-up to ‘Songs Of A Lost World’, he’s also previously shared that there’s a third album on the way which is “completely different”. Speaking to Absolute Radio’s Danielle Perry, Smith explained: “It’s really kind of random stuff, like late-night studio stuff. But some of it is really good actually, it’s just very very different.”
‘Songs Of A Lost World’ saw The Cure bag their first Number One album in the UK in 32 years, with NME awarding it five stars. “Merciless? Yes, but there’s always enough heart in the darkness and opulence in the sound to hold you and place these songs alongside The Cure’s finest,” it read.
“The frontman suggested that another two records may be arriving at some point, but ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ feels sufficient enough for the wait we’ve endured, just for being arguably the most personal album of Smith’s career. Mortality may loom, but there’s colour in the black and flowers on the grave.”
It was also included in NME’s list of Best Albums Of The Year, while lead single ‘Alone’ starred in NME’s Best Songs Of 2024. “‘Alone’ ended a 16-year drought and proved The Cure haven’t lost any of their magic. Through swirling synths and cinematic instrumentation, paired with Robert Smith’s poignant lyricism and melodies, this epic is a masterwork of ethereal beauty and raw emotional depth,” the latter read. “One of their most captivating songs to date.”
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