{"id":5487,"date":"2025-09-26T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/deep-cut-friday-push-by-the-cure\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T14:00:00","slug":"deep-cut-friday-push-by-the-cure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/deep-cut-friday-push-by-the-cure\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Cut Friday: \u2018Push\u2019 by the Cure"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-113560740.jpg\" width=\"\" height=\"\" alt=\"Lol Tolhurst and Robert Smith of the Cure in 1983. (Credit: Fin Costello\/Redferns)\"><\/figure>\n<p><em>Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On later Cure albums, Robert Smith\u2019s songs started getting longer, and so did the instrumental intros, with the band frequently establishing a groove for a minute or two before Smith begins to sing. On \u201cEndsong\u201d from last year\u2019s <em>Songs of a Lost World<\/em>, Smith doesn\u2019t open his mouth until more than six minutes into the track.<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/09\/5-albums-i-cant-live-without-x-ambassadors\/\">5 Albums I Can\u2019t Live Without:\u00a0X Ambassadors<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/09\/new-butthole-surfers-documentary-cements-the-psych-punk-heroes-experimental-legacy\/\">New Butthole Surfers Documentary Cements the Psych-Punk Heroes\u2019 Experimental Legacy<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/09\/stagecoach-festival-lineup\/\">Post Malone, Lainey Wilson Pull Up For Stagecoach Fest<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"C1dMW77dZeE\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>1985\u2019s <em>The Head on the Door<\/em> was the Cure\u2019s last album made up almost entirely of fairly succinct pop songs, with no lengthy epics. There is, however, a very long instrumental intro on \u201cPush,\u201d which opens with a bright surging guitar riff. For over two minutes, the band bashes through sections of the song that sound like a first verse, a chorus, and a second verse, without any vocals. And then, when the part that feels like a chorus comes around the second time, Smith finally belts out \u201cGo, go, go! Go, go, go! Push him away!\u201d In an album with college radio classics like \u201cIn Between Days\u201d and \u201cClose to Me,\u201d a half instrumental song contains one of <em>The Head on the Door<\/em>\u2019s most irresistible hooks, sung only once.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"ZbsTcEWFKnE\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>A 2006 deluxe edition of <em>The Head on the Door<\/em> features several instrumental demos that Smith made with a drum machine in December 1984. The brief \u201cPush\u201d demo serves largely to illustrate how much Boris Williams, the Thompson Twins drummer who joined the Cure in 1984, helped bring the song to life with bombastic tom-tom fills.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"Qti0C-FP75I\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>In concert, \u201cPush\u201d\u2019s unusual structure created an opportunity for fans to take the lead. In 2018, the Cure celebrated its 40th anniversary as a band with a concert in London\u2019s Hyde Park. And when the band played the instrumental first chorus of \u201cPush,\u201d you can hear a large segment of the audience start belting out the lyrics: \u201cGo, go, go! Go, go, go! Push him away!\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-three-more-essential-cure-deep-album-cuts\"><strong>Three more essential Cure deep album cuts:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-10-15-saturday-night\"><strong>\u201c10:15 Saturday Night\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The opening track on the Cure\u2019s 1978 debut <em>Three Imaginary Boys<\/em> set the tone for the band\u2019s career, with Smith making a teenager\u2019s disappointing weekend feel achingly grim and dramatic: \u201cWaiting for the telephone to ring and I\u2019m wondering where she\u2019s been.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-shake-dog-shake\"><strong>\u201cShake Dog Shake\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Andy Anderson, who played drums on 1984\u2019s <em>The Top<\/em>, died of cancer in February 2019. A month later, the Cure were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the band kicked off their set at the ceremony with \u201cShake Dog Shake\u201d from <em>The Top<\/em> before focusing on a few more famous songs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-prayers-for-rain\"><strong>\u201cPrayers for Rain\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The ominous <em>Disintegration<\/em> centerpiece \u201cPrayers for Rain\u201d is one of the many Cure songs where both Smith and Simon Gallup double up on bass to create an especially heavy low end, with backmasked guitar and piano adding an eerie atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series. On later Cure albums, Robert Smith\u2019s songs&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2152,31,24,1761],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deep-cut-friday","category-features","category-pushly","category-the-cure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}