Simon Price reflects on the mental toll and creative satisfaction of compiling the encyclopedic Curepedia about The Cure
The process of creating Curepedia changed how its author, Simon Price, listens to and thinks about The Cure. After spending three years researching and assembling what became a roughly 600-page encyclopedic guide, Price admits the work at times left him exhausted and close to burnout.
Yet the same labour produced a resource that combines discography, cultural context, personnel notes and interpretive essays into a single reference for fans and newcomers alike.
Price’s account is frank: immersing oneself in the darker corners of an artist’s catalogue can have a psychological cost.
He draws a parallel with his earlier biography of the Manic Street Preachers and their missing guitarist, showing that empathetic reconstruction of troubled lives can affect the writer’s own state of mind. Still, he describes being paid to listen to the records as a rare privilege, and one that ultimately rekindled his appreciation for the band.
Workload and emotional impact
Compiling Curepedia required intense listening, archival digging and interviews, and Price says the effort sometimes felt overwhelming. He acknowledges that spending long periods inside Robert Smith’s lyrical world—often melancholic and inward-looking—meant he was routinely engaging with material that could be emotionally heavy. As a result, the project combined the rigour of research with the subtle strain of imaginative empathy, a balance he has described in terms reminiscent of his work on Richey Edwards for his 1999 biography of the Manic Street Preachers.
A job that was a privilege
Despite those pressures, Price stresses the unusual joy of being compensated to listen closely to an influential catalogue. The routine of repeated playbacks allowed him to track how songs evolved in the studio and on stage, and to place them in wider cultural settings. He frames this professional intimacy with the music as fortunate: “There are worse ways of making a living,” he says, underscoring how research and fandom intersected during the book’s creation.
Structure of the book and notable entries
The volume opens with an extended analysis of the single “A Forest“, a track from 1980 that Price devotes more than four pages to unpacking. That entry mixes recording history, compositional breakdown and a look at how the folklore of the forest has influenced art and film, showing the book’s mix of musicology and cultural commentary. Elsewhere, Price provides listening notes for more challenging records such as the tenebrous 1982 album Pornography, offering readers ways to approach and re-approach work that can seem forbidding on first encounter.
Guides to listen better
Price deliberately writes with the aim of suggesting fresh angles for listeners. The book moves beyond dates and credits to propose interpretive frames—what he calls ways of listening—that can reveal hidden structure or emotional nuance. These sections function like annotated guides, helping fans decode sonic textures or lyrical references and encouraging renewed engagement with favourites and lesser-loved recordings alike.
The Cure’s Irish connection and the updated edition
Touring Ireland while preparing the revised edition led Price to add an entry exploring the band’s unusually warm relationship with Irish audiences. He documents the band’s relatively stronger chart performance in Ireland and traces possible explanations, from Robert Smith’s partial Irish heritage to the influence of Smith’s Catholic upbringing on records such as Faith. Price also notes Smith’s residence in Dalkey in the late 1980s and how those personal ties seemed to deepen the band’s resonance with Irish fans.
Publication timeline and events
Curepedia first appeared in 2026 and was revised and updated two years later; a revised paperback edition was published in 2026. Price added a detailed new entry on the band’s long-awaited 14th album, Songs of a Lost World, which he praises as a major achievement and contextualises with a retrospective on the album’s prolonged development, including its chart-topping release in 2026 after a 16-year gestation.
For readers who want to hear more from Price in person, he will present an in-conversation event about Curepedia on June 5 at The Empire in Belfast, followed by a special edition of his Spellbound club night, and on June 14 at the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire at 2pm. These appearances combine discussion with communal listening and dancing—an invitation to experience the music alongside the book’s insights.
In sum, Price’s handbook offers both reference material and interpretive companion pieces, aiming to make The Cure’s long career more accessible without diluting its mystery. Whether you approach the book for facts—line-ups, release details, chart positions—or for deeper listening prompts, Curepedia positions itself as a thorough, affectionate map to one of alternative music’s central acts.
