Creativity Quote by Robert Smith

Robert Smith’s joke lands because it’s both self-deprecation and a quiet flex. Calling “musician” the official label - passport-level, bureaucratically stamped - turns artistry into paperwork, as if his entire catalog can be reduced to a checkbox. The punchline (“That’s even funnier”) isn’t just about the absurdity of governments classifying creative identity; it’s about how any fixed title starts to feel counterfeit when your actual work is slippery, hybrid, and constantly reinterpreted by listeners.

The refusal to “class” himself as a songwriter also needles a certain rock-myth expectation: the tortured auteur who authors meaning with capital-A Authority. Smith’s public persona has always toyed with sincerity and theatricality, and this is that move in miniature. He’s sidestepping the prestige hierarchy where “songwriter” implies high art and “musician” implies a job you do with your hands. By acting like he doesn’t quite qualify, he preserves the band’s mystique: The Cure’s songs feel less like carefully argued statements and more like atmospheres you fall into.

There’s subtext, too, about authorship in a band context and in pop culture more broadly. Smith is the primary creative force, but insisting on a broader, almost anonymous descriptor (“musician”) dodges the cult of the singular genius. It also reads as a defense mechanism against being pinned down. If your passport can’t accurately summarize you, neither can anyone else’s narrative about what your music is “really” about.