If I love “Disintegration” by The Cure, what else might I like?
August 7, 2023 12:40 PM Subscribe
In addition, are there websites that allow you to query the name of a song, a specific album, a band, or a genre to get the names of similar songs/albums/bands?
Cocteau Twins
posted by VirginiaPlain at 12:48 PM on August 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by VirginiaPlain at 12:48 PM on August 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
Spotify lets you do this if you play a song then choose '[this song] radio' it creates a playlist. It also shows artists that fans of the Cure also listen to, such as: Joy Division, New Order, Echo & the Bunnymen, Psychedelic Furs, Smiths, etc.
posted by greta simone at 12:49 PM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by greta simone at 12:49 PM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
Death Cab for Cutie owes a lot of their sound to The Cure if you are looking for a modern band influenced by The Cure.
Every Noise at Once will help find bands, but for big ones like The Cure it's a bit less helpful.
It basically lists the same band have here: The Smiths, Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, Wire, Love & Rockets etc.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:53 PM on August 7, 2023
Every Noise at Once will help find bands, but for big ones like The Cure it's a bit less helpful.
It basically lists the same band have here: The Smiths, Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, Wire, Love & Rockets etc.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:53 PM on August 7, 2023
Response by poster: FWIW, I’m talking about the album, not the song per se. Thanks for asking mr_roboto
posted by BadgerDoctor at 12:54 PM on August 7, 2023
posted by BadgerDoctor at 12:54 PM on August 7, 2023
Robert Smith was also involved with Siouxsie & The Banshees for a few years, during which they produced some amazing music.
posted by abraxasaxarba at 1:01 PM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by abraxasaxarba at 1:01 PM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
Came to say the same thing.
I'd start with Tinderbox from Siouxie. It was the album after Smith left, but his influence is there and the sound is more polished.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:04 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'd start with Tinderbox from Siouxie. It was the album after Smith left, but his influence is there and the sound is more polished.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:04 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Nthing Spotify. The Radio option works if you're trying to find things similar to one particular song, album, or artist. If you've got more than one input, what I like to do is to create a playlist. Spotify then tries to anticipate other songs you might want to add to that playlist. I have a playlist with a handful of Cure songs on it, along with some Talking Heads, some Smiths, some New Order, etc., and some of Spotify's recommendations are David Bowie, the Clash, the Human League, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the Pet Shop Boys, which, yeah, kind of fits.
posted by kevinbelt at 1:22 PM on August 7, 2023
posted by kevinbelt at 1:22 PM on August 7, 2023
This was the original premise of Pandora and IIRC they were among the first to do it—I discovered many artists this way years ago, but haven’t used it in a while and can’t vouch for its current quality or feature set.
posted by staggernation at 1:22 PM on August 7, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by staggernation at 1:22 PM on August 7, 2023 [4 favorites]
Check out the band Vision Video! Their two albums are Inked in Red and Haunted Hours.
posted by cyclopticgaze at 2:21 PM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by cyclopticgaze at 2:21 PM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
These aren't going to be exactly the same, but from personal experience Disintegration was my favorite album back in high school and I also really loved Catherine Wheel (Black Metallic), the Church (Reptile), and Suede/London Suede (The Wild Ones).
posted by bizzyb at 2:36 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by bizzyb at 2:36 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
I still use Pandora and it does an. . okay . . job of finding music similar to other music. I find it a lot more user friendly than Spotify. The problem with it these days is its library is not as complete as I think it used to be, so there are an awful lot of repeats. The other problem is that if you like something, it will play it forever, on every station, until you learn to hate it. I have been listening to it for years now so it is pretty sure it knows what I like and it does not want to let me deviate. I so wish I had never touched the like button.
The like button is a powerful tool when used for evil. We had a Pandora subscription where I used to work and a friend used the like button to prank us on his last day. If you are ever wondering why Louis Armstrong singing What a Wonderful World played about every half hour, no matter what the context, in a certain used bookstore in Asheville, NC, that would be why.
posted by mygothlaundry at 2:47 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
The like button is a powerful tool when used for evil. We had a Pandora subscription where I used to work and a friend used the like button to prank us on his last day. If you are ever wondering why Louis Armstrong singing What a Wonderful World played about every half hour, no matter what the context, in a certain used bookstore in Asheville, NC, that would be why.
posted by mygothlaundry at 2:47 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Asylum Party - Their album Borderline is similar in mood and musicality, although the singer is more Andrew Eldritch than Robert Smith. Their single What will you learn is one of my favorite post-punk songs ever, albeit not terribly Cure-like.
Simon Gallup (bass player for The Cure) had a side project, Fools Dance, which still managed to sound very Cure-like.
More recently, Caveman's Never Want to Know sounded like a Cure/Catherine Wheel hybrid - it's the guitar sound.
posted by Transmissions From Vrillon at 3:56 PM on August 7, 2023
Simon Gallup (bass player for The Cure) had a side project, Fools Dance, which still managed to sound very Cure-like.
More recently, Caveman's Never Want to Know sounded like a Cure/Catherine Wheel hybrid - it's the guitar sound.
posted by Transmissions From Vrillon at 3:56 PM on August 7, 2023
So I absolutely love Disintegration - both the song and the album. I went to musicmap, and they put Interpol very close to The Cure, and I've got to say I really enjoy Interpol.
Also, there's some Jimmy Eat World songs which may also work for you - Gotta Be Somebody's Blues comes to mind.
posted by coberh at 6:46 PM on August 7, 2023
Also, there's some Jimmy Eat World songs which may also work for you - Gotta Be Somebody's Blues comes to mind.
posted by coberh at 6:46 PM on August 7, 2023
sigur ros for the epic sounds, death in vegas, mogwai, red snapper, smiths
posted by Sebmojo at 8:12 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Sebmojo at 8:12 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
The Twilight Sad is a Scottish band that is opening for The Cure on their current tour, some of their songs sound more Disintegration than others but they're very good.
posted by mmoncur at 9:46 PM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by mmoncur at 9:46 PM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
Maybe stuff like: Haunted - Love and Rockets, Sunday Morning - The Bolshoi, Joy Division - Atmosphere, Don't Fall - The Chameleons, Damaged Goods - Gang of Four, Primitive Painters - Felt, Under the Milky Way - The Church, Bella Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus - those tracks were auto generated for me by Plexamp - useful app to have if you want suggestions that are similar based on your own music collection.
posted by rongorongo at 10:42 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by rongorongo at 10:42 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Audioscrobbler has been calculating these recommendations for nearly as long as GNOD. While music-map is simply "fans of This also liked These", last.fm also correlates scrobbles (tracked listens) of albums and individual songs. But it doesn't attempt to automate music theory like Pandora's Music Genome Project, so the recommendations tend to be colored by, for example, what was popular on college radio in 1989 and what that demographic remains fond of 34 years later. The algorithm won't pick Something Blue as the Siouxsie track most akin to Disintegration.
The ascendancy of the CD pushed the industry to fill 74 minutes of polycarbonate and forsake the album as an art form. Nothing from the MP3 era holds my interest start to finish like Disintegration or Medusa. Mastering has changed too, so that sound will never be replicated. Looking at my playlists, Ego Likeness's Dragonfly has the greatest overlap. Or on the Prayers for Rain/Same Deep Water axis, Zaklęta w marmur and Czas komety from Closterkeller's uneven Graphite.
Guitar-driven post-punk similar to The Cure's earlier work fails to evoke the same response. If I wanted to listen to sides 3 and 4 rather than Disintegration all over again (such as while composing this post), the tracklist would range from ethereal darkwave to symphonic melancholy.
posted by backwoods at 2:45 AM on August 8, 2023
The ascendancy of the CD pushed the industry to fill 74 minutes of polycarbonate and forsake the album as an art form. Nothing from the MP3 era holds my interest start to finish like Disintegration or Medusa. Mastering has changed too, so that sound will never be replicated. Looking at my playlists, Ego Likeness's Dragonfly has the greatest overlap. Or on the Prayers for Rain/Same Deep Water axis, Zaklęta w marmur and Czas komety from Closterkeller's uneven Graphite.
Guitar-driven post-punk similar to The Cure's earlier work fails to evoke the same response. If I wanted to listen to sides 3 and 4 rather than Disintegration all over again (such as while composing this post), the tracklist would range from ethereal darkwave to symphonic melancholy.
posted by backwoods at 2:45 AM on August 8, 2023
My eternal answer to this question is the album While We Fall by the criminally under-appreciated Swedish artist Dimbodius. I heard the opening track Not For You on a random Winamp radio station almost 20 years ago (!!!) and it was a revelation.
posted by aoikaze at 10:39 AM on August 8, 2023
posted by aoikaze at 10:39 AM on August 8, 2023
Not exactly the same, but some Midwife stuff has a similarly epic feel, try “Anyone Can Play Guitar.”
“Crush” by Ethel Cain is very different in some ways, but has super Cure-y guitar lines.
posted by snofoam at 11:52 AM on August 8, 2023
“Crush” by Ethel Cain is very different in some ways, but has super Cure-y guitar lines.
posted by snofoam at 11:52 AM on August 8, 2023
ChatGPT is pretty good at recommending music that’s like some other music you already like.
posted by notyou at 4:38 AM on August 9, 2023
posted by notyou at 4:38 AM on August 9, 2023
You could try The Agnes Circle [bandcamp] Porcelain vid - very spatial sounds, darkwave I guess, cite The Bauhaus as important influence. Brooklyn ∩ UK.
posted by unearthed at 5:22 PM on August 13, 2023
posted by unearthed at 5:22 PM on August 13, 2023
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posted by mr_roboto at 12:48 PM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]