10 Reasons Why The Cure Ruled the ’80s
A tribute to my favorite act in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2019.
I began the ’80s as a child of country and Top 40 pop and ended it raging against the mainstream. My transition commenced my freshman year at the University of Florida in Gainesville during one of my first college party nights. Drunkenness, curiosity, and perhaps a touch of kleptomania led me to “borrow” two cassette tapes at two different gatherings — The Cure’s Standing on the Beach: The Singles and The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead — and take them home with me.
From the morning-after on, both bands and the genre they represented (then tagged “college rock”) would dominate the soundtrack of my life during the late-Ronald Reagan/early George H. W. Bush U.S. Presidential eras (1987 to 1989, three of the best years of my life). What started as a hangover fling evolved into a love affair that continues to this day
The Smiths had had the good sense to split up a few months earlier, after only three years of activity, but The Cure, which was actually my favorite band of all time for several months before being overtaken by The Smiths, carried on well past its prime.
Like so many great groups before and after have done a decade or so in, the band began…
