Song: “Lullaby”
Artist: The Cure
Album: Disintegration, 1989
Every post-punk junkie knows the basics about–or more so, the ‘hits’ off the iconic Disintegration. Most can verify the EP’s intended mood; it retains a somber notability that even the new-generation, black eyeliner-smeared goth kids can dig.
But to coin a Frank Ocean aphorism…’the best song wasn’t the single’.
While all of the 1989 album’s twelve tracks equally comprise the desiderata for funereal gloom, one sticks out as especially enslaving to the ears.
“Lullaby” is a creepiness-doused alt rock creation, visually and instrumentally. The four minutes provide a slice of incessant, very much adult fear…a mental deadfall of nightmare put to song, conceived by none other than melancholia’s supremo, lead singer Robert Smith.
Faintly strummed guitars draw the opening curtains of the song, and whiny, plucked violins take the stage–along with Smith’s whispery, staggered-breath appearance…”On candy stripe legs, the Spiderman comes…”.
Mind you, this isn’t Marvel hero Spiderman…but a terrorizing, UK-fabled eight-legged creature that makes its way into Smith’s bed. In the video, the singer wears pinstriped jammies and cringes under the covers while this thing takes over his bed and sanity. The apathetic, ghostly drumbeats–nor their players–help much.
