Songs of a Lost World by The Cure

Songs of a Lost World, the Cure's fourteenth album, arrived on 1 November 2024, the day after Halloween because Robert Smith asked for it that way, and it ended a 16-year wait for new material that stretched back to 4:13 Dream. Smith wrote every song on his own for the first time since The Head on the Door, co-produced with Paul Corkett, and the sessions ran through Rockfield Studios, with Reeves Gabrels on guitar for the first time on a Cure studio album alongside Simon Gallup, Roger O'Donnell and Jason Cooper.

It is vast, slow and dark, gothic rock drifting out toward deep space, with Smith sounding weathered and heartsick. Critics raved about the words, the gloom and the singing, and it became their first UK number one since Wish. "Alone" and "A Fragile Thing" are the ones radio grabbed, and at the 68th Grammys the album took Best Alternative Music Album while "Alone" won Best Alternative Music Performance.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.