10 Bands That Only Have One Key Member

One of the biggest advantages to being in a band comes with the camaraderie between the members. Aside from having more people to help fill out the sound of your songs, this is the kind of band of brothers mentality that keeps most groups going, having people to share the credit (or blame) for every piece of music that you end up putting out. That's not how all of these bands operate though.

Even with the band name to tie everything together, most of the decisions in all of these acts normally come down to just one person, who ends up calling most of the shots. That can be anyone from the guitar player to the singer to the drummer, but there's no disputing that these bands would be non existent if not for these guys leading the charge.

They may not play every single instrument on the albums or even write every single song, but they do have a firm grip on every single decision that these acts take on. Then again, it might be for the best that these acts stick with the band mentality as well, always having collaborators to work with and keeping every single song under the same creative umbrella. These people could have easily been solo artists if they wanted to, but where's the fun in just performing by yourself?

In the waning days of the punk movement, the Cure was considered a bit of an oddity. Whereas people like Joy Division were mining the more depressing side of the post punk world, these were songs that were aching with emotion, sounding like they were either about to fall apart at any moment or absolutely explode into something transcendent. It takes an entire army of power to make something that potent, but everything existed in the mind of Robert Smith.

Though the band has gone through many different iterations over their career, Smith has always been at the center of it all, working out the bugs of every single sonic detour and trying to make sure that his music is the most indicative of how he feels at the time. While you can see the kind of abrasive punk band they were trying to be in the days of Three Imaginary Boys, things seemed to change ever since the song Forest, with each song taking a darker shift before pivoting into the world of pop music.

The darkness is only one string to what Smith has in store though, morphing into the '80s with some of the biggest love songs of his generation like Just Like Heaven or Friday I'm In Love. The rest of the band may be a bit of a revolving door, but being in the Cure isn't really about darkness all of the time. It's having the bravery to be open with your music.