Lovesong

The first time I heard it, I didn't know it was by The Cure. It didn't sound like anything from Disintegration, that dark and dense album everyone knows. But there it was, amid the synthesizers and melancholic arpeggios, a song that breathed light: Lovesong. With its sticky bassline and those straightforward lyrics that repeat the same verse like a spell ("Whenever I'm alone with you / you make me feel like I am ... again"), the track stands out from the rest of the album. Robert Smith wrote it in the 80s as a wedding gift for his then-partner, but it ended up being the band's only pop hit in the United States, reaching number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1989. What's curious is that, although the album version lasts 3:28, they included an extended version of 5:16 on Mixed Up (1990). The mix changes: more reverb on the vocals, added harmonies, and a technical detail many don't notice: in the instrumental bridge between the first verses, the guitar doesn't enter as it does in the original version.

When Adele covered it on 21 (2011), it wasn't just a simple cover. She sang it with a voice broken by fatigue, but that gave it a raw and emotional air that moved the recording team to tears. Rick Rubin, the song's producer, said she recorded it over 30 times in a row, and every take was equally powerful. Adele had first heard it at a The Cure concert when she was a teenager, and years later, in Malibu, far from home, she decided to revive it to feel closer to her mother. The result not only entered the Billboard Jazz Songs chart at number 18 but also became an unexpected bridge between two generations of listeners. The 311 version for the movie 50 First Dates even reached number one on the Alternative Songs chart, surpassing the original. But the most interesting part is that Lovesong almost didn't make it onto 21: it replaced Never Tear Us Apart at the last moment, after four songs had already been cut from the original list.