The Cure//Killing An Arab

Yesterday’s Meursault track made me think of another Camus-inspired track, “Killing an Arab” on the only Cure album I have liked from start to finish so far, Boys Don’t Cry.

Tuesday fits well with this particular brand of French existentialism; we’re all going to die, might as well make the best of it.

I have to give Ryan full credit for introducing me to this punk classic, as I felt mostly indifferent to The Cure before hearing it, and much enamored after.

I think part of the reason I like this album (besides the fact that there really aren’t any loser tracks on the thing) is that it’s pre-goth/pre-90s glitzy keys. Instead, it’s all punk rhythm and riffs, which provide a more fitting context for Smith’s nasally dejected whines than that pre-fab suburban goth sound ever did (don’t get me wrong, I can get down with a some later stuff too—I just think this one shines!).

People were up-in-arms and crying racism upon the late-70s release of this song, missing the literary context. This led the band to place a label that denied the racist connotations on the single's 1979 reissue. Seriously, read the book, guys.



Killing An Arab.mp3

Whatever I do,
It amounts to the same:
Absolutely nothing.
I’m alive.
I’m dead.
I’m the stranger,
Killing an Arab.