Just Like Heaven

"Just Like Heaven" is the moment The Cure traded gloom for transcendent pop without losing an ounce of feeling. That cascading guitar intro — bright, tumbling, instantly recognizable — opens one of the most purely joyful songs the band ever made, a swirl of chiming six-string, a propulsive bassline, and sparkling keyboards that seem to spin like the lovers it describes. Robert Smith wrote it about his wife Mary, the dizzy vertigo of falling for someone, and his vocal carries that giddiness: breathless, smitten, half-disbelieving his own luck as he sings about kissing in a storm and a girl who is "just like a dream." Yet the song's genius is its undertow — beneath the euphoria runs a thread of loss, the fear that this perfect thing might vanish, that she's "only the girl in my dreams." From 1987's *Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me*, it crystallized The Cure's ability to be simultaneously ecstatic and aching. The production is lush but never heavy, every layer shimmering with movement. Culturally it became the definitive jangle-pop love song, covered endlessly, soundtracking countless first kisses and end credits. Play it driving at night, falling in love or remembering doing so — it's the rare song that captures happiness so completely it makes you slightly afraid of how much you have to lose.