The Cure's Robert Smith Addresses His "Soap Opera" Feud with the Smiths

He also revealed the next Cure album will likely be their last

Photo: Stephen McGill

BY Allie GregoryPublished Jun 15, 2021

The Cure frontman Robert Smith has addressed the band's perceived long-standing feud with the Smiths, revealing that it is mostly "imaginary."

Speaking with Jonathan Dean of The Sunday Times in an interview with Lauren Mayberry of CHVRCHES, Smith put some of the rumours about his beef with Morrissey to bed.

"With Morrissey, I got a flurry of stuff. And I thought, 'what does it matter?' This imaginary feud that happened 20 years ago," Smith said in a series of quotes that didn't make the published interview.

"I didn't really like the Smiths particularly," Smith continued. "They were competition for a very brief period. But more than that, I didn't connect with it. I didn't dislike them on a personal level — I didn't know them."

He added: "It never really got to me and then in later years it was this setup and I thought 'why?' And so since then I've realized how easily these things can spiral because people want it to be something. They're desperate for it to be some sort of soap opera."

In the public's defence, Morrissey and Smith have traded off some seriously heated quips over the years, famously beginning in 1989 with Morrissey calling Smith a "whingebag." That same year, Smith dubeed Morrissey a "precious miserable bastard." The insults continued for several years until 2019, when Morrissey explained that he "didn't mean" the rude comments lodged against Smith, blaming it on "Tourette's syndrome."  

In addition to his comments about Morrissey, Smith also told Dean that the Cure's next album will likely be their last.

"I can't think we'll ever do anything else," Smith said. "I definitely can't do this again."

See outtakes from Dean's interview with Mayberry and Smith below, and read the full interview here
 

Latest Coverage