Olivia Rodrigo just lived out the ultimate teenage fantasy: First you sing a song for Robert Smith about how miserable you are, then he gives you a hug. The pop queen and the Cure legend teamed up for a shocker duet at her surprise weekend set at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona, doing their collaboration from her new album, with the very Robert Smith title, “What’s Wrong With Me?”
What a beautiful moment of cross-generational goth bonding. The Eighties gloom god was positively beaming with pride and joy, standing beside her to sing this great new tune he helped inspire. Who hasn’t dreamed about making a list of all your problems so you can ask Robert Smith what’s wrong with you? And who hasn’t dreamed of Robert singing your words back to you, assuring you that it’s gonna be okay? Here’s to Olivia for making that fantasy real. You seem pretty sad for a goth so in love.
Olivia obviously wasn’t kidding when she kept saying how deeply her new tunes were inspired by the Cure. At Primavera, she sang her superb Number One hit “Drop Dead,” with the line, “You know all the words to ‘Just Like Heaven,’ and I know why he wrote them,” then she sang a duet with the man who wrote them. And oh yeah — in between, she did another song literally called “The Cure.” What a righteous rock-star friendship this is. It’s the grooviest thing, it’s a perfect dream.
The Robertrigo duet was a sequel to their moment last summer at England’s Glastonbury Festival, almost a year ago. “He’s probably the best songwriter to come out of England!” Liv announced, as Smith strolled onstage, a surprise that nobody saw coming. After they sang, she called him “the coolest, nicest, most wonderful man ever.” They did “Just Like Heaven” and “Friday I’m in Love,” while she wore a t-shirt that said, “You know all the words to ‘Just Like Heaven’…or do you”? It would take everyone nearly a year to figure out where that line was headed, when she dropped “Drop Dead.”
If you’re relatively new to the Cure, it’s key to keep in mind that Robert Smith almost never does things like this. Not in the Eighties, not in the Nineties, not now. It just doesn’t happen. He’s always been generous and gracious with younger artists, but he shies away from public cosigns like this. Seeing him get up at a damn festival and sing somebody else’s song? A shock to behold. But it’s a measure of his respect and admiration for Rodrigo as an artist.
“What’s Wrong With Me?” sounded just right for these two melancholy voices. “I went to the doctor and she said I was fine,” they sang. “Tried meditation with a bottle of wine/It’s like somebody put a weight on my chest/I should talk to a friend, but I can’t get out of bed/My head is spinning and my stomach is sick.” Yeah, this girl has definitely been listening to the Cure. The whole vibe of the song is basically, “You know all the words to ‘Disintegration,’ and I know why he wrote them.”
As always, Rodrigo gets the tiny details right. Love the way she sings about how she can’t leave her bed, which is a very Robert Smith dilemma, since he’s always been so fond of lines like “I wish I’d stayed asleep today” or “must have been asleep for days.” Indeed, her symptoms are so close to his in “Close to Me,” this duet amounts to a consultation with a specialist.
Over the years, Smith has done only a select handful of collaborations with his acolytes, such as Chvrches, the Twilight Sad, Crystal Castles, Gorillaz, and Tweaker. He appeared on a Billy Corgan solo record to sing a bizarre Bee Gees cover; he also did a guest spot for Blink 182, proof of his sense of humor. And Mick Jagger just announced that Smith sings back-up on the new Rolling Stones album, Foreign Tongues — probably the only thing the Stones album will have in common with Olivia’s.
But these Robertrigo duets are a rare and touching sight. She’s a lifelong Cure obsessive — who can forget the footage of her in the car, rocking out to “Boys Don’t Cry”? She’s a worshipful fangirl who’s always looked up to Robert Smith, gazing at him onstage in awe. Yet when they teamed up at Glastonbury, for longtime Cure fans, the strangest part was how happy he was, grinning from ear to ear—not something you see every day. It was so poignant to see him having so much fun. After Glastonbury, she posted a photo of them backstage…downing shots. It was the last sight you’d ever expect, which is why it was awesome.
But a year later, they were back to do her song. “It’s my first collaboration!,” she told the Primavera crowd on Saturday, letting the tension build before revealing her guest. “I am just so proud of it — I can’t believe that this song exists, with the person it exists with. I’m just so fucking overwhelmed!”
Nobody knew it was Robert until he came out to sing the second verse, although we all should have guessed from the in-joke when she sings “I’m staring at the ceeei-ling.” (The Cure’s greatest-hits CD was Staring at the Sea.) It’s the fourth new song she’s teased from the eagerly awaited album she’s dropping this week, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So In Love. It’s a first-time feature for her, but equally unusual for him. Smith was already at Primavera to play — The Cure headlined the festival on Friday, their first show since their 2024 magnum opus Songs of a Lost World, one of their best albums ever. Their Primavera set was full of rarities like the ace 1996 single “Mint Car,” which they haven’t touched in a decade, along with hits like “Pictures of You,” “Fascination Street,” “The Lovecats,” and yes, damn right, “Just Like Heaven.”
One of the many Robert Smith paradoxes is how he was always the ultimate depressive, sniffly Brit-goth moppet, yet he found his truest believers in the Eighties new wave girls of Southern California. His ballads of rainy English angst went over big in the land of sun and surf. “I remember on the Kiss Me tour we were in Los Angeles,” Smith told Rolling Stone in 2004. “And there were girls taking their clothes off and lying down in front of the bus to stop us from driving away. And I remember thinking, ‘This isn’t really what I imagined I would be doing with this band.’”
But Robert always had the most profound respect for this audience, even when it would have been way more fashionable for him to scoff at these fangirls. The Kids in America discovered the Cure with the 1982 synth-pop banger “Let’s Go To Bed,” about a couple staying up all night to argue when really all they need is some chamomile tea and a few hours of sleep. As Smith recalled, “Suddenly ‘Let’s Go To Bed’ was turning into a big hit, on the West Coast particularly, and we had a young, predominately female, teenage audience. It went from intense, menacing, psychotic goths to people with perfect white teeth. It was a very weird transition, but I enjoyed it. I thought it was really funny.”
So it makes sense to see him pass the torch to Olivia, who epitomizes the SoCal new wave fangirl. She’s always had a passion for this music, as you can hear in Eighties-style bangers like “So American,” “Deja Vu,” or “Love Is Embarrassing.” Or “Drop Dead” — that song would fit right on Blue Sunshine, the absolutely perfect goth makeout album from Smith’s side band the Glove. (Bet “Punish Me With Kisses” was on the jukebox at that bar.) Yet Olivia has crossed the line from fan to collaborator, with “What’s Wrong With Me?” It’s quite a vote of confidence, from the teen-angst poet who gave us Seventeen Seconds and The Head On The Door. But he takes Rodrigo and her music seriously, just as he always took his female audience seriously. He really did show her how to do that trick.
He also knows the humor as well as the pain of melancholy sad songs. One of my all-time fave live Cure moments was a couple years ago at Madison Square Garden, when they did “Lovesong,” which had everyone in the room singing along with the chorus, “I will ALWAYS love youuuu!” As soon as it was done, he announced, “This next one is called, ‘And Nothing Is Forever.’” Oh, Robert. Never stop.
Some of us were hoping he might stick around with Olivia on Saturday to sing “Happier” or “Favorite Crime,” but alas, it was not to be. (So…that Sour covers project? Still happening or what? It began auspiciously with David Byrne doing “Drivers License,” then pfffft.) The more Olivia songs he sings, the better. These two should keep on singing together—imagine how great it would be to hear, say, a mash-up of “Drop Dead” and “The Hanging Garden”? (“Pressed up in the bathroom line/Cover my face as the animals cryyyy”?) Olivia’s bond with Robert might have already reached “Why Can’t I Be You?” levels, but more power to her. For most of us who love the Cure, Robert Smith is someone we turn to with our adolescent despair, a confidante and a mentor, and somehow, we believe unto our souls that he understands us. We go to him with our saddest secrets. Seeing him stand side by side with Olivia to sing her secrets to the world? It’s goth intuition. Robertrigo forever.
Holzman and Hughes at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.Courtesy of Ekko Astral
Holzman and Hughes in Brooklyn, May 2026.Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
There’s no immediate resolution in any of this. There’s no surrender either — and a lot of great escape. White’s slide guitar in “Dollar Bill” sounds like a National Steel on steroids until the solo, when it turns into what seems like a theremin gone postal. “I Can’t Believe What I’m Hearing” has a great pop-wise chorus closer to the Pretty Things than Son House. And don’t miss White’s wry aside to the White Stripes’ old creation myth in the second verse of “G.O.D.,” on the way to the real business at hand. “Well, it’s the beginning of the world now,” he declares at the song’s end. “Let’s do it all over again.”
Jay-Z has turned the 30th anniversary of his classic debut album into a major marketing event
Jay-Z Knows the Past Still Pays
There’s a pleasant absurdity to the advertisements for JAŸ-Z30 that are currently found across New York’s subway tunnels. Their dramatic imagery — a stark black backdrop pierced through the center with a pair of hands, presumably Jay’s, fixed into the famous Roc diamond — invites a kind of religious authority that feels a touch ironic for anyone who’s old enough to remember all types of handwringing over those very hand symbols only a few years ago. And maybe that’s the point. By now, nostalgia’s grip extends layers deep. So much so that you could find yourself waiting for the train, reminiscing on the days when people still made jokes about the so-called Illuminati.
Jay-Z’s months-long campaign commemorating the 30th anniversary of Reasonable Doubt and the 25th anniversary of The Blueprint has indeed resurfaced the rapper-turned-mogul’s success story. Reasonable Doubt, released in 1996, positioned Jay as not only a resonant voice in hip-hop but also in the increasingly lucrative business around it. After major labels passed, the album was released independently through Roc-A-Fella Records and Priority Records, setting the tone for Jay’s career as a business…man.
And in the full-court press campaign around this summer’s anniversaries, culminating in this weekend’s trio of performances at Yankee Stadium, Jay’s business acumen is again at center focus. You’d be forgiven for throwing around buzzwords like “multichannel” or “cross-platform” to describe the slate of festivities. There was a Spotify-backed takeover of the J and Z trains; custom JAŸ-Z30 subway maps and a Google Maps guide; commemorative Brooklyn Public Library cards; and most recently Bowery Station and DUMBO pop-ups with archival footage and merch. (That these Yankee Stadium shows come on the heels of Taylor Swift’s wedding at MSG suggests some sort of mega-rich takeover of cultural institutions, but let’s leave that one for another day.)
The moves come as nostalgia continues to drive a considerable chunk of the music industry’s profits. In an era when old songs can circulate infinitely on streaming platforms, gaining new life in the form of everything from samples to memes, and when superfans are willing to spend on physical goods, limited merch, and live experiences, album anniversaries have become their own product launches. Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt campaign is only the splashiest recent example.
No wonder, then, that Beyoncé already appears to be setting the stage for her own run of commemorations for the upcoming 20th anniversary of her album B’Day in September. Over the weekend, she released her first new song in two years, titled “Morning Dew (Donk),” to tease the upcoming reissue. According to Luminate, older music still dominates attention, with only 43 percent of U.S. on-demand audio streams in 2025 coming from tracks released in the previous five years. This is also one reason why vinyl and physical formats have seen renewed value in recent years, with the RIAA reporting that vinyl sold 46.8 million units in the U.S. in 2025, compared with 29.5 million CDs. Luminate says superfans are 20 percent of U.S. music listeners and spend heavily on live events and physical merchandise; 73 percent of these fans purchase physical merch, versus 26 percent of general music listeners.
In today’s industry, having a major anniversary is like having a new product to promote, a way to participate in an already thriving marketplace for nostalgia. The demand is visible well beyond official artist stores: Vintage concert tees now trade as collectibles, with one 1967 Grateful Dead shirt selling at Sotheby’s for $19,300 and rare rap tees treated as wearable archives of hip-hop history. Anniversary campaigns give artists and labels a way to reclaim that energy, turning the secondary market’s appetite for old symbols into new, officially sanctioned products.
Jay-Z’s official anniversary store turns that logic into a menu of objects: a $1,500 collector’s crate, a $300 cassette box, $400 Yankees jerseys, and four-figure varsity jackets. Of course, Jay is far from alone when it comes to legacy acts cashing in on nostalgia. He’s more like one salient example of a much larger wave of artists and promoters marketing anniversary products that includes the Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness 30th anniversary super-deluxe edition, My Chemical Romance’s Black Parade stadium tour, and the returned Warped Tour, among many others.
Five years before Reasonable Doubt became the occasion for library cards, pop-ups, collector crates, and stadium spectacle, its 25th anniversary was marked by an NFT. In 2021, Sotheby’s and Roc Nation auctioned a one-of-one Derrick Adams artwork tied to the album, billed as the only official Jay-Z-authorized commemoration of the anniversary. Around the same time, Roc-A-Fella was in court over co-founder Damon Dash’s attempted sale of a Reasonable Doubt-related NFT, a dispute that ended with a judgment making clear that no shareholder could sell or dispose of an interest in the album — including through an NFT — without the company’s authorization.
That ownership question is becoming harder to avoid as music enters the AI era, where the archive is not only something to reissue, exhibit, or sell, but something that can be scraped, modeled, and trained on. Last week, SZA took to Twitter to express frustration with AI music company Suno, notably calling out Diplo by name as one of the company’s investors. “DO NOT GIVE AWAY YOUR VIBRANIUM !!! DO NOT TRAIN AI WITH YOUR GENIUS,” she wrote on Twitter. Her complaint was joined by Kenneth Blume, who said Suno’s workers were “stealing from countless struggling musicians.”
For an artist with a legacy as impactful as Jay-Z’s, the current anniversary boom feel like the latest phase of a longer project of deciding who gets to turn hip-hop history into intellectual property. Jay-Z’s legacy deserves preservation; few catalogs have made a stronger case for it. But the more that preservation arrives through limited-edition objects, auction platforms, luxury merch, and authorized experiences, the more it has to answer a harder question: When does protecting the archive become another way of extracting value from it?