Lovesong

What? The 90's are over? *sob*

This is an unusual post for me, as I have little personal interest in the band that covers this song and even less in the band that wrote it. However, the true strength of any song is shown in its ability to reach those outside the intended audience. Therefore, I'm gonna go with it. It's the equivalent of instead of telling those kids to get off my lawn, I'm gonna go see what game they're playing that seems like so much fun, even if I'm already sure I won't care for it.

When The Cure first became popular in the mid-80's, I was several years past the stage when they would have been any kind of big deal for me. Over time, The Cure has become the Eeyore of rock. I never got the musical appeal of that much mopey darkness. According to recent photos, front man Robert Smith looks like he's been hitting the backstage deli trays pretty hard. There isn't enough black fabric in all of Europe to hide that pudge. Let's face it, the wild hair and smeary makeup may have had some appeal for angsty teens of the 90's. Now it's just creepy, dated and more whiny than ever. Time to pack it in. Oh, and please take your little goth buddies, Depeche Mode with you. My apologies to their fans, but their music just doesn't work for me and never did.

Here's The Cure with one of their better efforts, "Lovesong".

Omaha reggae rockers 311 come from a much happier place aesthetically, although since I'm not a pot puffing skater boy, I'm not their target audience. But I do see the appeal. The fact that they covered a song by The Cure is interesting because if you ask any of the band members, their primary influence is The Clash. 311 did tackle a Clash cover several years back for a tribute album (which we will address another day).

311 released their version of "Lovesong" on their Greatest Hits album in 2004. The one essential thing that 311 does here is to refashion the song in a way that retains the mood and integrity of the original, yet sounds very much like 311 should. This is, I feel, a critical ingredient for a successful cover version. It has a sturdy yet comfortable reggae groove that carries the song very nicely and lets the melody breathe a bit. I feel it fits the song much better than The Cure's pounding 4 beat, but that was likely a product of the time when it was fashionable to have highly compressed and gated snare beats, which sounded huge but were ultimately distracting. I'm sure this tune goes over very well when they play it live, as it dates from the childhood of 311's audience. Here's 311 with "Lovesong". Enjoy!

As usual, you can find all the music you can stand from both 311 and The Cure at Amazon. Unless you're really a fan of either band, a Greatest Hits disc should suffice.