Skip to main content

The Cure announces a new album and releases its first new song in 16 years, 'Alone'

1 / 2

This cover image released by Fiction/Capitol Records shows "Songs of a Lost World" by The Cure. (Fiction/Capitol Records via AP)

NEW YORK – Goths, rejoice: At long last, The Cure has released new music.

ā€œAlone,ā€ their first new song in 16 years, premiered on Mary Anne Hobbs’ BBC 6 Music radio show Thursday morning.

Recommended Videos


The English band also announced a new album, ā€œSongs of A Lost World,ā€ to be released on Nov. 1.

The Cure teased new music on social media leading up to its release, sharing a snippet of the song that featured their trademark layered guitars, metallic percussion and sparkling synths. Near the end, singer Robert Smith jumped in with the gloomy lyrics, ā€œThis is the end of every song that we sing."

ā€œIt’s the track that unlocked the record; as soon as we had that piece of music recorded I knew it was the opening song, and I felt the whole album come into focus," Smith said in a press release. "I had been struggling to find the right opening line for the right opening song for a while, working with the simple idea of ā€˜being alone’, always in the back of my mind this nagging feeling that I already knew what the opening line should be… as soon as we finished recording I remembered the poem ā€˜Dregs’ by the English poet Ernest Dowson… and that was the moment when I knew the song — and the album — were real.ā€

The Cure has toured in the years since their last album, 2008’s ā€œ4:13 Dream,ā€ but has yet to release a new album. In 2019, Smith told Rolling Stone the band had recorded 19 tracks, ranging from 10-12 minutes long, and wanted to release a new album in Halloween of that year. It did not happen.

But now, The Cure joins a long list of 2024 band reunions, which so far includes everyone from Britpop icons Oasis, who ended a 15-year hiatus and, presumably, the long-held feud between brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, to Linkin Park — now with a new singer, Dead Sara's Emily Armstrong — their first performances since the 2017 death of lead singer Chester Bennington.