You've got what I want, Robert Smith sings through fat, strangling-vine guitars in "The Real Snow White," his wan chirp finally collapsing in a long, falling yowl. It is classic, inconsolable Smith — with a twist. On the verge of 50 and leading a double-guitar gnarly-glam version of the Cure, Smith sounds less like a lovesick prince in 4:13 Dream's looping-riff viscera and swallow-you-whole echo, and more like the avenging middle-aged Roger Waters on Pink Floyd's Animals. There is none of the rag-doll bounce of the Cure's late-Eighties hits. The guitar overture in "Underneath the Stars" is closer to electric Neil Young than fey gloom. There are no evident hooks in "The Scream," just dirty surge and Smith's yelping rage. His dreaming ends, of course, with the usual defeat, in "It's Over." But along the way, his fury is its own relief.

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.