The Cure’s Robert Smith on the failings of polarising record ‘Wild Mood Swings’

Posted On February 23, 2025February 23, 2025

Ask any loyal fan of The Cure what their favourite albums are, and it’s likely they’ll list them in order without hesitation. However, while there are definitive strong points within the band’s discography, the lesser-appreciated, so-called “weak” moments are just as important as the rest. In fact, though less popular than the others, these records arguably gave more insight into the complex depths of Robert Smith’s artistic identity.

Bloodflowers, for instance, doesn’t necessarily hold up against the extraordinary masterpieces within Disintegration or Pornography, but it came at a juncture when Smith was at a crossroads with the band and wanted to quit. However, the process of writing and making the album made him fall back in love with all of the reasons he pursued music in the first place.

Part of this was establishing new avenues for creative expression and weaving broader, more poetic or theoretical concepts into his writing. While Smith has always been incredibly adept at this practice, writing Bloodflowers enabled him to take this to the next level, utilising metaphors as concepts for love, loss, and self-reflection. A lot of this revolved around the title itself, with the musician using the comparisons with creating art feeling like “a bloodflower popped out from his heart”.

However, another that proved Smith’s affinity for utilising varied storytelling techniques was Wild Mood Swings, despite emerging from a significantly tumultuous period for the band, making the broader sound and direction suffer. Still, there are some gems to be found within the record, like the immediately enticing ‘Jupiter Crash’ and the inexplicable appeal of ‘Strange Attraction’. There’s even something considerably endearing about ‘The 13th’, despite its attempts at off-kilter whimsy falling short.

According to Smith, the issues with Wild Mood Swings weren’t that its sound didn’t live up to the usual Cure standard, nor did it stem from the broader contexts of the band’s struggles at the time. Instead, its problems centred around one thing he had entire control over—its length. As he explained to Q Magazine in 2000: “When [it] came out I was surprised by the, let’s say, mixed reaction. The failings of Wild Mood Swings is that it’s two songs too long – ‘Gone and Round And Round’ shouldn’t have been on there.”

Despite the stark honesty, he did then admit that it’s also “one of my top five favourite Cure albums,” likely due to the personal depths he had to reach in order for it to work, thematically and sonically. Many of the songs also adopted a more complicated approach, like ‘Strange Attraction’, which pulled from chaos theory to explore the wandering nature of unpredictable consequences.

That said, the reasons why it became one of their least popular releases are also clear. Not only does it seem inconsistent in its broader sound, but it also lacks the one thing that makes Smith’s songwriting so great—grounding. While many of their other records beautifully capture the essence of their appeal, oscillating between glorious intricacies and ambiguities, Wild Mood Swings seemed far less focused, making the genuinely impactful moments struggle to land.

Related Topics