Why the Cure Might Be the Best Soundtrack for Middle Age

It’s as if lead singer Robert Smith is sitting next to me in the waiting room. I feel a little less alone in my stress bubble.

The anticipation surrounding the new album sent me back into a deep Cure listening phase. I loved the band in my teens, but they fell off my radar in recent decades. Songs of a Lost World was just the excuse I needed to revisit their discography.

These songs — and others from our favorite artists — still resonate because of how our brains are hardwired.

“Listening to a very familiar piece of music can be rewarding for the reason that our brains love making correct predictions,” says Susan Rogers, Ph.D., a director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory, and author of This Is What It Sounds Like: A Legendary Producer Turned Neuroscientist on Finding Yourself Through Music. “When we know that a crescendo or a favorite solo is coming, we enjoy anticipating it and then experiencing the dopamine release when it finally arrives.”

An appreciation for music when you’re 50 or older tends to get downplayed, but recent research has suggested that older adults are turning to their favorite songs to help with everything from isolation to depression. It can be used to unlock memories, keep our brains healthy, and even mark important milestones in our lives.

A recent University of Michigan survey found that two in five (or 41%) adults between the ages of 50 and 80 considered music “very important” to them. Three-quarters of them said music helped them with stress and relaxation, and 65% said it helps their mental health or mood.

And those positive effects aren’t just because they’re remembering their carefree youth. “Our relationship with music has to change as we reach 50, because we’re different people,” says Dr. Joel Howell, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School who worked with the poll team. “We impose meaning on (our favorite music), but the context can change over time.”

That's not just true about the songs but the people who sing them. Robert Smith, the Cure's lead singer, has aged perfectly. He looks constantly disheveled, like he’s just dropped off his kids at soccer practice and he’s dreading having to talk to other parents. He looks exactly like I feel — exhausted, a little annoyed, trying to keep it together, wondering if it’s too early for a nap.

But it’s the songs that have the biggest impact, sometimes even more than they did when I was young enough to think gloomy was sexy. I’m not an especially maudlin person anymore, especially since I hit my 40s and became acquainted with adult problems. (Teenage me wasn’t prepared for taxes, colonoscopies, and raising kids.) But those sad songs still find a way to crawl inside my skull and refuse to leave.

Rogers assures me that’s normal, and even healthy. “For most of us, having a musical companion walk us to the brink of sad thoughts and then bring us safely back from the ledge is a good feeling,” she says. “It reminds us that sad times do end.”

What makes me sad has changed so dramatically over the past 30 years. And yet the songs still feel like they’re talking directly to me. It’s almost as if they’ve evolved along with me, saying what I need to hear at the exact moment I need to hear it.

Look at a song like Pictures Of You. When I first listened to it in the early ‘90s, it was clearly about missing ex-girlfriends. But today, it feels like a song about growing older, and looking at pictures that remind you how fast time moves. It’s every time your Facebook “Memories” gives you another photo of your son when he was a toddler or on his first day of Kindergarten, and it sends you into an emotional tailspin, because wait a minute, wasn’t that just yesterday? In the blink of an eye, the kid in that photo got replaced by a surly teen who won’t even talk to me! And now I’m crying to Pictures of You for reasons that have nothing to do with why I cried to it in 1990.

My blood tests came back fine, btw. So, I’ll probably live long enough to hear the new Cure album. I’m curious if I’ll like it, and if it’ll feel like the band is still riding shotgun with me, playing sad melodies to help me get through life’s peaks and valleys. 

But now I’m even more curious to see how long these new songs stick around beyond next month, or even next year. Will they say something different to us when we’re 70, or 80, or even 90? I guess we’ll all find out together.