The Cure - The Lovecats
The Cure’s first Top 10 hit in the UK, The Lovecats came out at a time when I was a young pop-picker listening to Shakin’ Stevens, Modern Romance, Madness. With its “ba-ba-ba-baa” sections, playful bassline, hissing and sound embellishments and apparently simple lyric it was easy to be drawn into its world.
And then there was Robert Smith, stalking through the video like he was auditioning for a Rentaghost spinoff, adding himself to the pantheon of confusing ’80s pop idols, and doing a pretty good job of masking the darkness, the anti-pop of his band’s stock in trade.
Some might feel that The Lovecats is not highly danceable, but that only holds true if you’re the sort who believes dancing to be in some way a co-ordinated activity. For the rest of us, happy to jerk and twitch along as we ignore the gap between what we think we look like and the awkward reality of it, songs like this are a great leveller.