The Cure's Robert Smith is a love cat with nine lives. He's the groovy big sister you always wished you had, a swirl of big, sticky hair and lipstick and New Wave angst. He still reigns as the coolest lesbian rock star of all time, even if he's technically a straight guy. The Cure are on a roll these days, and the new album is their most adventurous and passionate since Disintegration. "Before Three," "Lost" and "(I Don't Know What's Going) On . . ." are jaw-droppingly great hymns to romantic obsession — the Cure's specialty. The first big surprise on The Cure is how loud and resonant the guitars are, with no neo-Eighties keyboards at all. The next big surprise is Smith's huge vocals — he sounded wispy on the erratic Bloodflowers (2000), but he emotes live and direct here. People tend to associate Smith with adolescent gloom, but he's always sung smart adult love songs — "The Lovecats," "Just Like Heaven" — and he hits one of his all-time romantic peaks here, wailing the twisted devotion of "Before Three": "Whispering dreams, so fucked and high/It's hard to hold this night inside." It's the grooviest thing, it's a perfect dream.

“Oh Sherrie”

Steve Perry's girlfriend Sherrie Swafford was actually in the studio when Perry began writing this song--his lone Top Ten hit as a solo act--with two co-writers. The trio began at midnight one night with just "Oh, Sherrie!" and "hold on, hold on." Three hours later, they had a complete song. Swafford, however, had to wait until the next day to hear it. "Sherrie actually got tired and went to bed," Perry said. She also appeared in the video, but their relationship did not hold on for long.