Killing An Arab

[1978]
Lyrics and music by Robert Smith

"Killing an Arab" was the first single by The Cure. It was recorded at the same time as their first LP in the UK, "Three Imaginary Boys" (1979) but not included on the album. However it was included on the band's first US album, "Boys Don't Cry" (1980).

Composer Robert Smith has said that the song "was a short poetic attempt at condensing my impression of the key moments in L'Étranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus" (Cure News number 11, October 1991). The lyrics describe a shooting on a beach, in which the Arab of the title is killed by the song's narrator; in Camus' story the main character, Meursault, shoots an Arab standing on a beach after staring out at the sea and being overwhelmingly blinded by the sun, reflected on the sea, the sand and the knife the Arab was holding.

The song has a controversial history, since it has often been viewed as promoting violence against Arabs. In the US, The Cure's first compilation of singles, Standing on a Beach (1986), was packaged with a sticker advising against racist usage of the song. It saw controversy again during the Persian Gulf War and following September 11th. "Killing an Arab" was the only single from the "Three Imaginary Boys" era not to be included on that album's 2004 remaster although it remains available on the album "Boys Don't Cry".


The song was revived in 2005, when the band performed the song at several European festivals. The lyrics, however, were changed from "Killing an Arab" to "Kissing an Arab". Smith added a whole new opening verse when the band performed it at the Royal Albert Hall, London on April 1, 2006 as "Killing Another". The "killing another" lyric has also been used during the 2007-2008 4 Tour.
This song lends two of its lines to the titles of one of The Cure's compilation albums, "Standing on a Beach", and to its CD/video counterpart "Staring at the Sea".

"Killing an Arab" has been covered by Frodus on the 1995 Radiopaque compilation Give Me The Cure and again in 2004 by DJ Riton. Also, the Electric Hellfire Club copied it on their 2000 Cleopatra Records compilation "Empathy for the Devil". Recently, Santigold covered the song at Lollapalooza 2009.

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Registrata durante le sessioni per il primo LP della band, Three Imaginary Boys (1979), ma non inclusa nel primo album pubblicato nel Regno Unito, la traccia venne inserita nel primo disco dei Cure per il mercato statunitense, la compilation Boys Don't Cry (1980). Robert Smith ha raccontatodi aver scritto il pezzo quando ancora frequentava le scuole superiori e come la canzone "fosse un piccolo tentativo poetico di condensare le sue impressioni circa i momenti chiave del romanzo breve Lo straniero di Albert Camus".

Il testo del brano descrive una sparatoria sulla spiaggia, nella quale un arabo viene ucciso dal narratore del brano; nella storia di Camus, il protagonista Meursault, spara a un algerino sulla spiaggia, sopraffatto dal suo ambiente. Meursault viene condannato per la sua onestà.

La canzone ha una storia molto controversa, poiché è stata spesso fraintesa come una dichiarazione di violenza razzista verso gli arabi. Negli Stati Uniti, quando uscì la prima raccolta di singoli dei Cure, Standing on a Beach (1986), sulla copertina del disco venne incollato un adesivo che negava ogni intento razzista del brano.

Killing an Arab scatenò altre polemiche durante la guerra del golfo di inizio anni novanta e dopo gli attentati dell'11 settembre 2001.[8] Tutte le polemiche portarono alla messa in atto di una sorta di damnatio memoriae nei confronti della canzone, che divenne l'unico singolo del periodo di Three Imaginary Boys a non essere incluso nella versione deluxe della ristampa del disco in questione, non venne inserita nella raccolta di singoli Galore del 1998, nel Greatest Hits della band pubblicato nel 2001, e nemmeno nel cofanetto antologico Join the Dots. Attualmente Killing an Arab rimane comunque disponibile nelle sole raccolte Boys Don't Cry e Standing on a Beach.