“The Walk” by The Cure

"The Walk" was a stand-alone Cure single, out on Fiction in June 1983, and it's the sound of a gloomy band learning to dance. After Simon Gallup left in mid-1982 at the end of the Pornography tour, the Cure had shrunk to its two founders, Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst, and the pair built this one together, Smith writing the words. They brought in Steve Nye to produce on the strength of his work on Japan's Tin Drum, and Tolhurst later said it was their first time with a real producer, one who could make electronic instruments sound more natural.

That's the trick here: a skittering synthetic pulse with a warm, human wobble to it and Smith's voice twitching over the top. It came between "Let's Go to Bed" and "The Love Cats" and later landed on the compilation Japanese Whispers.

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