3. The Cure, Maybe Someday
I once had a boyfriend, briefly, who made fun of me for liking any Cure songs made after 1989. Specifically, he thought it was ridiculous to like Wrong Number, their 1997 attempt at that electronic-but-still-alternative that made groups like Garbage so popular. (NB: It’s still a really good song.) He also had no respect for Bloodflowers, the group’s 2000 return to gloomy form after a decade best characterized by the album title Wild Mood Swings.
Maybe Someday was released to radio in January of 2000 and got up to #10 on the modern rock chart; it would be their last song to get major radio play, despite never being officially released as a single. It was also a hit on college stations.
I never bought the album for some reason, but Maybe Someday made the early part of my year. I was going through a particularly mopey phase, taking a year off after high school and sitting in my parents’ basement watching movies all day. I was also in a relationship that was more or less disintegrating, though that wouldn’t finish playing out for another year or so. I was reading lots of Par Lagerkvist and somehow Robert Smith’s extremely vague lyrics seemed very meaningful.
The best Cure songs–Lovesong, say–are the romantic ones, the ones you’d hear on the soundtrack to a teen adaptation of Return Of The Native.* And Maybe Someday is almost there. Almost. But the song sounds a little too muddly, and lyrically it’s just not that interesting.
I like the “change of head”/”change of tense” lines, but I’m not sure what they actually mean because the rest of the song completely lacks specifics. The chorus is optimistic and the verses are regretful; the “you” could be a girl or a heroin needle or God. Allowing for interpretation can be nice, but it can also sometimes seem lazy.
Maybe Someday is a good song, I think, and worth another listen, assuming you haven’t heard it in nine years. But I don’t think I’d rank it that high on a list of anything anymore.
(*As opposed to, you know, the Hallmark adaptation starring the young and dreamy Clive Owen, the soundtrack to which is not so exciting.)
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