Into The Music
Robert Smith asked them to play his band’s songs, and Manic Street Preachers did not just show up and phone it in.
The Welsh group took the stage at London’s Royal Albert Hall this week as part of the Teenage Cancer Trust concert series, a charity run curated for years now by The Who’s Roger Daltrey. But this time, among the setlist surprises, came a fully committed cover of The Cure’s “Close To Me,” delivered with the kind of sincerity that reminded everyone why the Manics have outlasted so many of their contemporaries.
They also aired a handful of genuine rarities, songs that the average fan only knows from deep cuts and B-sides, which tells you something about the care they brought to the room. These were not throwaway gestures. This was a band treating a charity gig like a main event.
The Teenage Cancer Trust shows have always punched above their weight in terms of lineups. Past years have seen The Who, Paul McCartney, and Noel Gallagher take the same stage for what is nominally a fundraising event but routinely turns into some of the best live music London gets all year. The format works because the artists involved seem to actually care, rather than treating it as a tax-deductible inconvenience.
Manic Street Preachers covering The Cure makes a kind of obvious sense once you think about it. Both bands spent the 1980s and 1990s building something dense and emotional and occasionally overwrought in the best possible way. Robert Smith and James Dean Bradfield occupy different spots on the rock spectrum, but they share an instinct for drama and a refusal to sand down the rough edges of their songwriting.
“Close To Me” in particular is a perfect choice. It is built on anxiety and claustrophobia, all ticking rhythm and swirling keyboards, and it has the kind of melody that lands immediately even if you have never heard it before. The Manics playing it live is less a tribute and more a conversation between two bands that have been quietly adjacent for decades.
No word yet on whether this cover will surface in any recorded form, though given how frequently charity show recordings circulate online, it seems like only a matter of time. For now, the people who were in the room got something genuinely special, which is exactly how these nights are supposed to work.
The Teenage Cancer Trust shows run through the end of the month. Several nights have already sold out, and given the quality of what has been announced, that is not even slightly surprising.
There’s something genuinely interesting about this from a critical standpoint , the Manics are a band whose intellectual self-seriousness has always coexisted uneasily with their pop instincts, and The Cure’s catalogue is basically the same tension from the other direction. Robert Smith asking them to interpret his songs isn’t a casual choice. I’d be fascinated to know which tracks they chose , whether they leaned into Disintegration-era grandeur or went for the more angular, post-punk earlier material. Either reading would say something about both bands.
What a beautiful collision of two bands that have influenced each other more than most people realize. I always explain to my students that the lines between post-punk, goth, and what we’d later call alternative rock were genuinely blurry in the 80s , the Manics absorbed so much of that sonic DNA even as they were writing their own manifesto in eyeliner and feathers. The Teenage Cancer Trust shows have always been special because the artists seem to actually care, and having the Manics cover The Cure for charity is the kind of moment that reminds you why rock music still matters to people.