Wednesday, September 12, 2018

The Trivia You Learn on the Internet

Being an individual of a certain age, I am a fan of post-punk/proto-Goth band The Cure, though my one post mentioning them name-dropped their one-off project with their mailman on lead vocals. Lately, I have been listening to the band quite a bit because of a conversation with a friend who is also a big fan.

One of the band's most atmospheric songs from their early career is the 1981 single Charlotte Sometimes, a moody number about a girl who sometimes is 'dreaming while the other people dance'. Poking around the t00bz tonight, I found a video (disavowed by singer Robert Smith) for the song, and learned that the song was based on a 1969 novel of the same title. The video for the song is a nice visualization of the novel's plot, which involves a protagonist, Charlotte naturally, who exchanges bodies periodically with another girl from forty years before her own time:


The Cure - Charlotte Sometimes from Nexus on Vimeo.


Put into its proper context, the song takes on a whole new meaning- it's not a song about a doomed romance, but something much more fantastic.

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