Just Like Heaven

I have recently rediscovered the song “Just Like Heaven” originally performed by Robert Smith of The Cure. The lyrics are daunting, mystical and sadly relatable to anyone who has been in love. There are several interpretations to the song but I believe there are underlying connotations that paint a vivid picture of a frustrated love and a failure to express it.

This song is about a dreamy day near the seashore with a loved one. The lyrics were inspired by a trip with his then-girlfriend (and later wife) Mary Poole to Beachy Head in southern England (a cliff and notorious suicide hotspot). Smith said the opening line of the song (“Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick”) refers to his childhood memories of mastering magic tricks, but added “on another level, it’s about a seduction trick, from much later in my life”.

But then, this song uses the metaphor of the cliff and the rough sea as a way to delivering a much deeper meaning, and turns an innocent story into a tragic one:

This is about a man who can’t commit to a love. It’s too much work or he’s too afraid. The “dizzy edge” by the “raging sea” probably refers to all the hopes and fears of taking that chance at love. But he loves her truly “and dreamed of all the different ways [he] had to make her glow” (he imagines all the different possibilities he has to seduce her and make her happy).

So he lets her go. But one day he “wakes up” and realizes that he has made a terrible mistake. She’s gone and now it’s too late. But in the end the menacing cliff took his love away and it drowned inside of him.

My favorite version, thus far, is by Katie Melua who takes the story and turns the he into a she, because she is a woman.

Here are the bittersweet lyrics:

“Show me how you do that trick
The one that makes me scream” she said
“The one that makes me laugh” she said
And threw her arms around my neck
“Show me how you do it
And I promise you I promise that
I’ll run away with you
I’ll run away with you”

Spinning on that dizzy edge
I kissed her face and kissed her head
And dreamed of all the different ways I had
To make her glow
“Why are you so far away?” she said
“Why won’t you ever know that I’m in love with you
That I’m in love with you”

You
Soft and only
You
Lost and lonely
You
Strange as angels
Dancing in the deepest oceans
Twisting in the water
You’re just like a dream

Daylight licked me into shape
I must have been asleep for days
And moving lips to breathe her name
I opened up my eyes
And found myself alone alone
Alone above a raging sea
That stole the only girl I loved
And drowned her deep inside of me

You
Soft and only
You
Lost and lonely
You
Just like heaven