Pick four songs from any band and you can tell a lot about their sound. This summer, I’m featuring #RockBlocks, four picks from bands across various genres. They might be wildly different from each other, but what binds them together is the fact that they’re all a part of my life soundtrack.
It’s ironic that one of the most underrated songs on Disintegration is the title track. The album is viewed as a masterpiece because it showcased several of the band’s most storied recordings. “Pictures of You”, “Fascination Street”, “Lovesong”, “Plainsong” and “Lullaby” all have a right to be considered among the band’s top ten songs. But somehow lost in the shuffle is a title track that’s arguably better than all of the aforementioned classics.
When I saw the band perform at NYC’s Madison Square Garden in 2016, they played over 30 songs that night and closed the first set with “Disintegration”. The gravitas of that performance said it all. “Disintegration” had all the maturity, depth and precision to feel like a band’s swan song. But instead of ending, The Cure just keeps going. They keep writing. They keep recording. They keep performing. It’s the great paradox of “Disintegration”, which becomes more apparent with each passing year.
“I never said I would stay to the end.”