Is This The Cure?

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I was watching this new Olivia Rodrigo video yesterday, thinking how endearing it is she likes the Cure so much, particularly for an old Cure fan like myself (don't tell Morrissey). She's referenced the band a few times in her songs and she performed onstage with Robert Smith the two songs she seems to like best, "Friday I'm in Love" and "Just Like Heaven". But this new song would seem to reference an earlier Cure song, the title track off the Pornography album from 1982. It's the one time a Cure song makes any kind of reference to the band's name, concluding a narrative about sexual escapades that have left the participant(s) jaded and desensitised with the statement that "I must fight this sickness, find a cure." Rodrigo's lyrics seem to refer to a relationship or relationships that she ultimately finds unsatisfying despite the effort she's put in. You could read it like she needs an actual cure to a psychological affliction or like the standards of modern romantic love will never match the level of passion or sincerity she imagined listening to Cure songs as a child or teenager.

YouTube's algorithm decided to follow up this Olivia Rodrigo video with the new Rolling Stones video, "In the Stars".

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Yes, that's a new song, released this month. The Stones have de-aged themselves. We're at the point now when spellcheck should really know "de-aged".

Maybe the Stones and Rodrigo are on the same record label these days and that's why the algorithm chose it as a follow up but it was also fitting. Rodrigo's song is from a young artist seeking to communicate with the work of an older artist while the Stones are clearly trying to connect with youth. Whether it's to-day's youth or their own past is debatable. I looked at the comments section on YouTube, filled with people either praising or deriding the special effect. One or two people wondered if any young people came across the video and thought this was a new, young band. I don't see any comments that would indicate that.

It's an interesting song, not as great as anything they produced since before the mid '80s. Ideas about things "in the stars" seem to be cropping up lately here and there. Maybe people are concerned about fate. Maybe it's just the Cthulhu lobby again.

You know, throughout human history it seems like we've been looking forward to the day when we can divest ourselves of the disgusting and painful physical body and dwell in a place of eternal youth and beauty. It's starting to seem like Heaven can one day be built and you can live there, if you have the money, or whatever currency turns out to be viable in this new ethereal plane.