Count Robert Smith among the folks who are clinging to their Apple iPods for dear life rather than buying into streaming services. While appearing on the latest episode of BBC’s Sidetracked with Annie and Nick podcast, the frontman of The Cure revealed he’s sitting on a cache of the classic MP3 players — each of which is curated to fit a certain mood.
While describing his listening habits, Smith said he doesn’t “stream music on principle and never have.” Instead, he’ll buy physical records and dip into his iPod collection to revisit certain eras like ’70s disco after a “couple of beers.”
“I’ve got playlists, iPods. I’ve got loads and loads of different iPods with stickers on them so I know in the dark which one’s gonna play which,” he said. “So, they’ve all got stuff on them which suits my mood. There’s so much music I’ve got — not in a nostalgic way, but stuff that I can not just move about to but also means something to me, reminds me of a lot of times and people.
As a result, it would be “disingenuous” of Smith to say he was fully in tune with recent musical trends like brat summer or Chappell Roan, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t appreciate their work.
“It would be a bit weird if I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s my favorite,’” he explained. “I think what they did as artists is really fantastic. I think that I’d be dishonest if I said it’s what I listen to at home. So yes, I’ve been aware of [Charli] for a long, long time. Chappell Roan, although she’s been doing it for a while as well, has only really emerged into wider consciousness over the past year. But anyone that really gets out and does something, I just think it’s great.”
Elsewhere in the podcast, Smith addressed Chappell Roan’s very public struggles with fame and parasocial fans. Admitting it was a “complicated subject,” he said, “You want people to feel like they’re engaging with you. But it is a modern-world phenomenon that there’s a sense of entitlement that didn’t used to be there amongst fans.”
He added that there is no possible way to train for a sudden rise to fame: “If you’re elevated to a position of celebrity or success over a reasonably fast period of time, it’s more difficult to deal with things because you have no grounding in how to deal with like the lower level.”
Watch the iPod segment and listen to the full episode below.
As for The Cure, they recently released Songs of a Live World, a live companion to their comeback album, Songs of a Lost World. Read why the latter project was one of the best albums of 2024, and grab your physical copy here.