A special alchemy

In the midst of the Eighties, the Cure reached a turning point. With “The Head On The Door”, their sixth album, released in 1985, the British band cracked the UK Top Ten for the first time, broadening their audience thanks in part to a decisive shift towards pop and a sound less dark than that of their early days and, above all, of the legendary gloom trilogy “Seventeen Seconds”-“Faith”-“Pornography”.

The context was therefore favourable when, in 1986, the group returned to the studio to work on their next album. “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me”, released on 25 May 1987, marked a further step towards a more accessible songwriting style, with more immediate tracks interspersed with experiments that remained firmly rooted in darkwave, even venturing into psychedelic territory, starting with the opener “The Kiss”: six-plus minutes of scorched, distorted psychedelic guitars that create an unnerving, disorienting mood capable of hypnotizing the listener like a spell. Alongside tracks that kept ties with the band's past atmospheres – from “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep” to “One More Time” via “All I Want” – new, more immediate and melodic episodes emerged, starting with the catchy (if not entirely successful) single “Why Can't I Be You?”.

Within that inexhaustible double musical hodgepodge, “Just Like Heaven” represented the most fully realized balance between pop sensibility and the English band's historical identity, managing on this occasion to emerge from the darkness and ascend to Heaven. At least for the duration (just over 3 minutes) of this elegiac love song. The unusually radiant lyrics were inspired by a seaside trip Robert Smith took with his future wife Mary Poole to Beachy Head, in the south of England. In the video, Smith dances with her: “The song is about kissing and fainting on the floor. Mary dances with me because she's my girlfriend. The idea is that one night like that is worth 1000 hours of graft,” he would later reveal. The opening line (“Show me, show me, show me, how you do that trick”), meanwhile, refers to Smith's passion for magic, reframed here as a form of feminine seduction.

The song's central element is built around a descending guitar riff, which appears between the verses and in parts of the bridge and final verse. This guitar line stands in contrast to the “dirtier mix” of the rhythm guitars. A graceful melodic line and punchy keyboard riffs frame one of The Cure's perfect pop songs, one that made a mark on the charts (the Cure's first US hit, reaching No. 40 on the Billboard chart in 1988) as well as in its author's heart. Years later, in 2003, Robert Smith would speak of it in glowing terms: “It's the best pop song The Cure have ever done.” He also recalled the peculiar circumstances of its creation: “In 1987, my wife Mary and I were living in a small two-bedroom flat in north London. The other room was my music room. The only discipline I had in my life was self-imposed. I'd set myself a regime of writing for 15 days a month; otherwise I'd get up in the mid-afternoon and watch TV until the pubs opened, then go out drinking. As soon as I wrote it, I knew it was a great pop song.” And on another occasion he revealed: “As soon as I wrote it, I knew it was a great pop song,” he explained, adding elsewhere that at the time he thought he'd never manage to write anything as good again.

The success of “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me”, which also gave us the no less magical “How Beautiful You Are”, cemented the English band's international growth, especially in the United States, and paved the way for “Disintegration” in 1989, the epic album destined to become one of the most representative works in the career of the former Three Imaginary Boys. The gates of pop heaven had opened for the Cure: “Just Like Heaven”.

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14/04/2026