When Chvrchesâ Lauren Mayberry met the Cureâs Robert Smith
The musicians discuss collaborating on the Glaswegiansâ new single, whatâs great about rock â and what needs to change
Pictures of you: Robert Smith of the Cure sang with Lauren Mayberry on How Not to Drown from Chvrchesâ new album, Screen Violence C FLANIGAN; GREG CHOW/SHUTTERSTOCK
Last week, rather thrillingly, I had a long and delightfully discursive FaceTime chat with Robert Smith of the Cure and Lauren Mayberry, the singer in Chvrches. Not an interview anyone really expected, but then their collaboration â on Chvrchesâ recent single How Not to Drown â was a shock too. Mayberry, 33, originally from Scotland, is in Los Angeles, where she lives, appearing on video in front of a yellow flower. Smith, 62, from Crawley in West Sussex, is on the south coast, with, yes, his scraggly dark hair and eyeliner, curtains drawn to keep daylight out. The Cure turned 40 three years ago: has he got any advice for how to keep Chvrches â who are ten â going for that long?
âWeâll be dead!â Mayberry says, laughing. âWe started too late.â âThatâs what I thought,â Smith chips in. âNot that youâd be dead,â he clarifies quickly. âBut there is no secret. Itâs very easy for me to say now, but at a very young age I thought Iâd rather fail on my own terms than succeed on someone elseâs, and I still feel like that. It doesnât guarantee longevity, but whatever time you have is of value and thatâs more important than having a long career and thinking it was rubbish.â
How Not to Drown is from the chart-topping electro-indie trioâs forthcoming fourth album, Screen Violence. âIt is weird to talk about you in front of you, Robert,â Mayberry says. âBut the fact that you sang a song with us and didnât send it back circled in red pen saying, âTerrible metaphorâ? Well, weâre very pleased.â Mayberry says that her boyfriend jokes that all of her favourite singers canât sing, to which Smith flinches. âWhat?â he exclaims. âPut him on!â When Smith says that he has been listening to Chvrches, it appears to ever so slightly blow Mayberryâs mind. When she was in her teens she would take a bus to Stirling to browse CDs by the Cure. âItâs definitely not lost on me that youâre still in love with music,â she says, beaming.
Hitting the right note: Chvrches collaborated with the Cureâs Robert Smith
Their collaboration is a jagged and pummelling blast of bass and synth, with lyrics about Mayberry feeling overwhelmed: suitable for when most of us feel, well, overwhelmed. âSomebody around the band said radio stations arenât going to play songs that are depressing because everyoneâs already depressed,â Mayberry says. âI thought, âGod. Youâre not going to like the album then.â But I also thought it was a load of crap. I wasnât listening to any party bangers last year.â
âIf you talk to someone and youâve got a problem, you donât expect them to tell you jokes,â Smith says, in agreement. He has a wonderful knack for a blunt conclusive statement. âThere are moments you really donât need to laugh, and what Iâve always tried to do with my band is, when I feel like Iâm going to do happy stuff, I do happy stuff. Itâs just about how I feel at different times of my life. Iâve never thought of what I do as a career and think it would be incredibly difficult to be an artist that had to fit into a genre. When youâre young and growing up you think, âI hope I never turn into that person.â Thatâs really been my main driving force â I had this image of who I donât want to be; I had no idea who I wanted to be.â
When Chvrches write their songs, bandmates Iain Cook and Martin Doherty create sounds for Mayberry to write stories over. Smith is fascinated by this way of working, fitting words to somebody elseâs tunes. He compares it to Tin Pan Alley.
Has his own writing process changed? âItâs slowed down!â he says and laughs loudly. The Cure have made 13 albums, including maudlin masterpieces Pornography and Disintegration, and huge chart hits Friday Iâm in Love and Close to Me. There is a 14th record in the works, but then that has been the case for years.
Robert Smith: âI think the modern world has gone down a really weird detourâ AMY HARRIS/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
âI must admit,â he says, with sadness, âIâve struggled more with finishing the words to these new Cure recordings than at any other point. We recorded 20-odd songs and I wrote nothing. I mean, I wrote a lot, but at the end I looked at it and thought, âThis is rubbish.â The difficulty is Iâve become such a harsh critic of myself I think, âWhoâs going to be interested in that?â It is really that bad. I was listening, thinking this is the best music this band has made and my words are drivel.
âLast year I just gave up. I thought, âI canât do it. They can all be instrumentals.â And this year I sort of came back to it. Last year was difficult for a number of reasons, not least the pandemic, but what I wrote this year I have enjoyed.â
Yet it is still a struggle. âYou write a certain number of songs and, honestly, you repeat yourself,â he admits. âHow many things are there to write about? Seven stories or something? You try to find different words for something and it steps out of your normal use of language and sounds terrible. I want to sing as I speak and my vocabulary is reasonably OK, so I thought, âIâll put âundulatingâ in a song.â That is one I tried. Then I think, âYouâre not singing f***ing âundulatingâ!â â
Smith is hugely enjoyable company. At one point we reconnect because he is a bit muffled and he apologises for trying âÂŁ10 in-your-ear bluetooth thingsâ. Rock stars are up there on stage, as icons. A fulfilment of our wildest desires. But there is very little more relatable than fiddling with cheap tech.
He just loves a chat, revealing humour and vulnerability. âThe new Cure stuff is very emotional,â he says. âItâs ten years of life distilled into a couple of hours of intense stuff. I canât think weâll ever do anything else.â On Glastonbury, which the Cure headlined on the Sunday in 2019, at the last festival that took place, he quips: âYeah, we closed Glastonbury!â Then he talks about a Miami festival years ago. âIt was f***ing awful: 100,000 people chanting, âTiesto.â â Tiesto is a DJ. When I ask if Smithâs new lyrics have anything to do with the weirdness of lockdown, he replies, âI donât see anyone anyway!â before clarifying that he knows he had it easy. He had space. That was key to contentment, and Smith, the songwriting issue aside, now seems full of it â a happy man best known for era-defining sad songs.
There is another new Chvrches track called Good Girls, with the line: âKilling your idols is a chore/ And itâs such a f***ing bore.â It is about artists who do something reprehensible and is a subject Mayberry has spoken about before. On a panel once, she jokingly pleaded for âone nice straight white man in a bandâ.
Lauren Mayberry: âItâs up to each person whether you divorce the artist from the artâ REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
âWell, Robertâs the unicorn,â she says, grinning. âThe unicorn who has not done anything terrible in any of those newsworthy ways.â Smith looks sheepish. Mayberry had an argument in a pub once with a friend who wanted to continue listening to an unnamed singer after an indiscretion had been revealed. âItâs up to each person whether you divorce the artist from the art,â she says. âBut I feel like we spend so much more time talking about a handful of disappointing males than anything else. People get more annoyed at people saying, âIsnât he a rapist?â than they do at the artist who broke their heart by doing such and such.â
Smith asks if she can divorce the art from an artist, and she says if someone is the lyricist, she finds it harder because it is their universe we are being invited into. âWho cares what the drummerâs up to!â Smith says with a laugh. âBut then,â Mayberry adds, âitâs not up to people to live up to my standards.â It is a continuing discussion. âI find it difficult to divorce art from the artist,â Smith admits. âBut the best way is just to avoid the internet. Pretty much everyone is going to let you down and itâs really difficult for people to come to terms with idols having feet of clay.â He pauses. âUnless they die?â
Mayberry and Smith navigate a very different world of pop music. From the early days of Chvrches, Mayberry has been very online â writing a powerful article about pop misogyny; using the internet to engage with fans and fight fires. Smith, on the other hand, has never had a smartphone. He talks about doing the job that he and Mayberry do pre-internet. On their first tour to New Zealand the Cure had a fight and their hotel room was trashed. It made the Daily Mail and Smith was told off by his parents when he got home.
âBut you had to really do something newsworthy to make the newspapers,â he says. âThere was a limited space so the threshold was high to make a headline. Now there is no threshold. Itâs just everything. I think the modern world has gone down a really weird detour, to be honest. And at some point we will say, âWe just took a wrong turning.â People are just overwhelmed. Iâve realised that my life, in technological terms, is simple.â He pauses before talking about FaceTime. âThis is really novel,â he continues. âThis is my third time doing it and I hate it.â Mayberry, a screen-savvy millennial, apologises but Smith says it is OK. âItâs a communication device,â he admits. âBut you canât look at someone when talking to them. Iâm finding it difficult, so I realise I fell off the merry-go-round. But I feel better for it.â
I finish by asking Smith if he knew that Mayberry once dressed up as him for Halloween. She cringes. I found a photo online. âYou see. Social media is cruel!â Mayberry protests. Smith grins and suggests he pops a blonde wig on so he can have a Mayberry costume. âPeople asked if I was Edward Scissorhands,â she says.
I could have talked to these two for hours. What enormous fun and emotions. But she has an album to release and he an album to â finally â finish.
Screen Violence is out on Aug 27
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