Disintegration

The ULTIMATE break-up song! Before I was married, I would play this song whenever a relationship didn't work out. This song has all the elements of a failed relationship and literally reeks of emotion. "It's easier for me to get closer to heaven than ever feel whole again." My God, put the gun to my head and fire away! Here's a sure-fire recipe for singing the blues: Play this song back-to-back with Counting Crow's "A Murder of One" and Gin Blossom's "Hey Jealosy." Then tell me you aren't ready to either slit your wrists or camp out in your ex'es back yard with binoculars. Love Stinks! (Hey that was by the J Giles Band...hmmm).
:-) Peace

This is, in my opinion, THE best song ever...He sings it so well to....I don't have any way to describe it. Although I often end up with listening to it with streams of mascara and eyeliner running down my face....

I love this song, too and always subscribed to the idea that it's about a breakup BUT tonight I listened and wondered if it's actually not about a romantic breakup but rather about the trappings of fame and his role as a pop idol (he was a BIG star in the UK at least, at this time) and how disgusting some of it is to him...

Read the lyrics again and try putting them in these terms, the backstabbing references and the references to crowds cheering...references to addiction and duplicity ...very possibly talking about the trappings of pop stardom and dealing with industry types.

This song works on the level of a troubled pop star who wants to get out, who is sick of the carousel of band members and the pressure ...he doesn't necessarily want to keep doing it over and over and never made that promise to begin with.

If anyone is remotely interested I can go through line by line and explain why I think this is about his career and not a breakup with a girlfriend.

Another example would be:

"through the eye Of the needle it's easier for me to get closer to Heaven than ever feel whole again"

A (biblical) reference to being rich and how empty he feels now that he's achieved that material goal.

Had to share...Let me know what you think.

I grew up listening to the Cure, and their unique sound along with their beautifully poetic and melancholy lyrics spoke to me deeply. I loved everything they did from early albums like the top and 17 seconds, to head on the door and kiss mex3, but disintegration (album) to me is their masterpiece. While the whole album is amazingly deep and wonderfully atmospheric, this song was special to me. I had the lyrics drawn on my bedroom mirror in sharpie (it wipes off glass); it just resonated with me on a very deep level as a treatise on the superficialities of life I suppose.

Twenty years later, I see it as a prophetic vision of my life to come. I'm married now, to a sweet girl, but it's all come back round to breaking apart again. We married to create a home due to an unplanned pregnancy, and though I've tried my damnedest to 'make it work', I miss the kiss of treachery, the shameless kiss of vanity, up tight against the side of me. I hate myself for it, how hard can it be to sacrifice happiness on the altar of selflessness? But as things have begun to fall apart, this illusion is slowly being shattered, the addiction of duplicities, as bit by bit it starts the need to just let go my party piece.

But I never said I would stay till the end, and I leave her with babies and hoping for frequency. Leave her with photographs, pictures of trickery, stains on the carpet and stains on the memories, songs about happiness murmured in dreams when the both of us knew how the ending would be.

You can hate me, but I doubt you could possibly loathe me the way I do. And so it's all come back round to breaking apart, breaking apart like I'm made up of glass again, holding my breath for the fear of sleep again, it's coming apart again over and over and over.

And now that I know that I'm breaking to pieces, I'll pull out my heart and feed it to anyone. I'm broken, and though tears come unbidden at my dramatic self destruction, crocodiles cry for the love of the crowd and three cheers from everyone. Dropping through sky through the glass of the roof through the roof of your mouth through the mouth of your eye through the eye of the needle, it's easier for me to get closer to heaven than ever feel whole again. Who really believes in fairy tales anyway?

So I leave you with photographs, pictures of trickery, stains on the carpet, stains on the memory, songs about happiness murmured in dreams when we both of us knew how the end always is.

How the end always is.

I'd give just about anything to hear this one (and The Same Deep Water as You) played live..

The whole compilation of Disintegration (the opus as a whole) to me is a story being told of love's gains and losses and the insecurities that we feel while experiencing love. I think it's a concept that takes us from song to song while taking us to each intense emotion we experience during a relationship. Not the actual facts, per se, but the extreme emotions we have floating in our minds. It's a journey. Take a ride. I always hit play on Plainsong and build the story from there until the end with Untitled. Each song supports the next and reinforces the latter.

When you're a huge fan of a band and feel as if you've listened to almost every masterpiece they have ever recorded, there is always that song you have never paid much attention to and skipped through the majority of the time. Every single listen of Disintegration (the album), I did that to this song. One day I paid full attention to the lyrics and pure emotion of this song and wow. Now it's probably tied up there with 'From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea' for my favourite Cure song and well, every song I've ever listened to. "Now that I know that I'm breaking to pieces, I'll pull out my heart and I'll feed it to anyone." Simply amazing.

He continues to choose women who are not true to him and are not right for him. Each time he breaks away from this type of woman, in a self-destructive way, he finds he want to find another just like her despite the pain and torment she caused him. He repeats this over and over never finding true love.

He gradually finds that he is just like the type of woman he abhors, yet continually finds himself drawn to. He is so completely addicted to falling in this type of love while he knows that it is self-destructive.

As soon and he escapes the inappropriate relationship, he feels a void in his life and repeats the cycle again.

***Not suicidal, but self-destructive. Symbolism.

I dated a woman I was deeply in love with, but I knew she was completely wrong for me. It finally took her strength to break off the relationship. That was twenty years ago. Disentigration.

the way robert smith sings it.. just speechless. it makes the meaning of the song so much ... more indescribable.

electioneering, I respectfully disagree. A party piece is something someone does as a stunt or act to entertain others in a party atmosphere. Something as simple as a good joke, or being able to play the guitar or do the splits. It's some superficial act used to entertain people.

In this song, his party piece is him pretending to enjoy the relationship and acting like there's nothing wrong. However, he starts to let go of his party piece... i.e. he can be his true self and shatter the illusion he has created for everyone else that his relationship is a happy one.