The Cure have launched the second single from their upcoming studio album Songs Of A Lost World. The plaintive A Fragile Thing follows the release of Alone last month and finds frontman Robert Smith singing of love and loss in typically despondent fashion.
Don't tell me how you miss me
I could die tomorrow of a broken heart
This loneliness will change and we feel too far apart
Nothing you can say to change it back she said
Nothing you can do to but sing
This song is a fragile thing
"A Fragile Thing is driven by the difficulties we face in choosing between mutually exclusive needs and how we deal with the futile regret that can follow these choices," says Smith. "However sure we are that the right choices have been made… it can often be very hard to be the person that you really need to be."
Songs Of A Lost World is the first album from The Cure since 2008's 4:13 Dream. In the years since, the band have toured extensively but not released any new material, despite occasionally hinting that a new album – or two – were almost ready for release.
"Probably in about six weeks time I'll be able to say when everything's coming out and what we're doing next year and everything," Smith told Zane Lowe in 2021. "So we were doing two albums and one of them's very, very doom and gloom and the other one isn't. And they're both very close to being done. I just have to decide who's going to mix them. That's really all I've got left to do."
In August, a new release finally arrived, when The Cure released a limited edition 12-inch 'eco vinyl' record featuring live recordings of two previously unreleased songs, And Nothing Is Forever and I Can Never Say Goodbye, through Naked Vinyl, a record label dedicated to promoting sustainable vinyl. Those two songs both appear on the tracklist for Songs Of A Lost World, which is detailed below.
Songs Of A Lost World is released on November 1 via Fiction/Polydor across a number of different formats including marble vinyl and white vinyl editions.
The Cure: Songs Of A Lost World tracklist
Alone
And Nothing Is Forever
A Fragile Thing
Warsong
Drone:Nodrone
I Can Never Say Goodbye
All I Ever Am
Endsong
