Siamese Twins

I think it's a mistake to assume that Robert Smith's lyrics are autobiographical. And it's also a mistake to assume that if they are autobiographical, that they should be interpreted literally.

With that said, I have a slightly different interpretation of this song.

A theme in many of Robert's songs is duplicity (e.g. "Disintegration", "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea") and I find especially duplicitous the theme explored both in this song and in "Watching me Fall", in which the narrator is lured into sex with a prostitute.

The way I interpret this song is that the narrator is in a committed relationship with someone who entered his life, changed his world quickly, and to whom he gave himself fully, possibly too soon. Everything was wonderful, colorful at the start, but now that the initial feelings are fading, he is wondering if it was right. Are relationships always like this - all-consuming, stifling, limiting? He is having second thoughts about his choice. ("I chose an eternity of this / Like falling angels / The world disappeared / Laughing into the fire / Is it always like this? / Flesh and blood and the first kiss / The first colours / The first kiss.")

His questioning of their relationship leads him to infidelity in a most scandalous manner, either with a literal or metaphorical prostitute. This is his way of acting out his resentment and building hatred towards the person he is supposed to love; his way of dealing with being stuck in a bad relationship. ("We writhed under a red light / ... / In the morning I cried.")

Now that the act is done, the hatred begins to turn inward, and he is lost in a mire of guilt, hatred, and resentment. The "other" woman has tainted him - his last shred of innocence is now gone ("I walked away and grew old"). But back at home, he is met with unhappy silence from his partner. ("You never talk / We never smile / I scream / You're nothing / I don't need you any more / You're nothing"). I read the things he "screams" in the last line to be things he does not actually verbalize to his partner. He can't bring himself to actually face their failing relationship in any other manner, but his resentment towards her has built to the point where he is nearly mad. Existentially he comforts himself with the knowledge that it doesn't really matter if he's unhappy - we will all die anyway - but he still wonders, is this all there is or could be expected from life and love? ("Sing out loud / We all die!!! / Laughing into the fire... / Is it always like this?")

And he laughs to himself (into the metaphorical firestorm within him), for while he will never tell her, he has betrayed this woman who he both hates and loves, and with this he holds information that could destroy her in one swoop just as he feels she is destroying his soul with every day they pass together.

Knowing that Robert and Mary have been together since such an early age, I can see speculating that this stems from feelings he had about their relationship. Whether he truly acted out his feelings as the character in this song does we shall never know, but it is a beautiful work and some of the finest lyrics in his catalogue.

This is the song that made me fall in love with The Cure. I bought Pornography after hearing this. Then stole a couple of their tapes from my uncle.

"I scream 'You're nothing...I don't need you anymore, you're nothing..."

That part really gets to me; it sounds like the ultimate expression of shame, pain and disgust.

my favorite album.....for the lyrics......and favorite cure song......

it's so deep..

AMAZING, amazing album.

yes its about suffocation and resentment in a relationship. i like isitalwayslikethis? interpretation. theres sensuality and hatred in it. its weird because i dont see relationships this way.

The song about Robert's first time... scary.

This song is about how ugly love and sex truly are.

robert's first time was at a halloween party whith mary (his now wife. isnt that sweet?) in which he was dressed as a surgeon. he used ketchup for blood as part of his costume and the sickly sweet smell drove him nuts and now he always associates sex with rotting ketchup smell. nice.

I agree with IsItAlwaysLikeThis, more or less. The narrator being stuck in a relationship, developing hate for a person he was once fond of. I also came to think of this because of the title – being unchangeably part of something which you detest. The a blade is mentioned, maybe to put an end to it. He wonders “Is it always like this?” because he was in love at the beginning and is now so disappointed – do all relationships take this course? Why did he get into this in the first place? It must have been her” voodoo smile”. And he is not only disappointed but disgusted, perhaps feeling like he’d rather died being stained by the contact, as if ‘worms were already eating his skin away’. I think that the right light does not necessarily refer to prostitution. But who is the girl at the window? Maybe she reminds him of freedom (the window being a symbol), of the feelings you have when you are happily in love, however in some way makes him realise that he is uncontent. I mean, that does happen sometimes, doesn’t it? You are in a relationship, neither happy nor really sad, than you just see someone, and you don’t even know the person, and suddenly you notice how distressed you are. “I walked away and grew old”, to my mind, is only an imagination of what would be the alternative to his present situation – something mirthless. We don’t now why, but there is no way out for the narrator, the only thing he can do is to remember that “we all die”.