As a follow-up to each subscriber playlist, I record a short podcast that breaks down one of the playlist’s songs and explains why I included it. I explore the song’s history and influence, how I first heard it, why it’s continued to stick with me over the years, and/or its place in the playlist.
For this episode, I’m breaking down The Cure’s “This Twilight Garden,” which originally appeared as a B-side on the “High” single (1992, Elektra).
This song was featured in the April 2022 subscriber playlist, “30 Wishes.”
Transcript
In the liner notes for Join the Dots, a compilation of The Cure’s various B-sides and rarities released in 2004, Robert Smith described his love for hearing B-sides from his favorite artists. “I always hoped the B-side would give me another version of the artist,” he wrote. “Something as good as the A-side but somehow different.”
One of The Cure’s best B-sides, and one of their best songs period, is “This Twilight Garden.” Originally released as a B-side for “High,” the first single from 1992’s Wish, “This Twilight Garden” is one of the dreamiest songs in The Cure’s catalog. The layers of ethereal guitars and atmospheric keyboards create an exotic soundscape through which Smith’s delicate voice seems to drift, wide-eyed and full of wonder.
The lush music is matched by some of the most sensual and unabashedly romantic lyrics that Robert Smith has ever written. Smith has called “This Twilight Garden” one of The Cure’s best love songs, as well as his “most quintessentially English song.” The lyrics were inspired by, of all things, his garden and his attempts to “capture that feeling of late summer dusk, the colour of the sky, the smell of the grass, the sound of the last bird singing.”
The result is enchanting. As Smith sings lyrics like “I lift my eyes from watching you/To watch the star rise shine onto/Your dreaming face and dreaming smile/You’re dreaming worlds for me,” the song’s rich arrangements swirl around you, creating an otherworldly experience. The Cure’s lyrics are often filled with angst, darkness, and broken hearts, but here, Smith sings from a place of delight and satisfaction, declaring “No one will ever take your place/I am lost in you” during the song’s chorus.
Wish features a number of excellent B-sides, including “Play,” “Scared as You,” and “The Big Hand.” But “This Twilight Garden” is the one that has always stuck with me, almost from the very first moment I heard it. It’s as strong as anything on the album, but I’m glad that it’s a B-side. That somehow makes it feel even more special, like a hidden treasure.
When Trent Reznor inducted The Cure into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 2019, he called them “one of the most unique, most brilliant, most heartbreakingly excellent rock bands the world has ever known.” He then went on to call their music “a custom world for anyone who has ever dreamed of escape.”
Listening to “This Twilight Garden” truly feels like an escape to a world all its own. A world filled with a romanticism so pure and sensual that it verges on sublime. A world that could only have come from the mind of Robert Smith and The Cure.
If you enjoyed this episode, then check out my podcast archives.
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