After weeks of teasers and an imaginative rollout that took us right back to The Cure's roots, "Alone" is finally here. It's Robert Smith and co.'s first proper single since 2008's "The Perfect Boy", and the first studio recorded track to emerge from their fourteenth album Songs of a Lost World. Live versions of two other new tracks, "And Nothing is Forever" and "I Can Never Say Goodbye", were released last month on limited edition eco-vinyl that sold out in a heartbeat.

Watch the lyric video for "Alone" below:

Smith first spoke about the existence of a new The Cure album way back in 2019, saying that the band had recorded 19 tracks with many of them running up to 10 minutes or longer. Two years later, he implied that the songs would be split over two albums, saying "One of them's very, very doom and gloom and the other one isn't." In 2022, the title Songs of a Lost World was confirmed by Smith, with the intention to release the album ahead of the band's Shows of a Lost World tour later that year. That didn't happen, but many of the new songs were played, including "Alone", "And Nothing Is Forever" and "I Can Never Say Goodbye", which Smith has said is about his older brother Richard who passed away in November 2017.

Songs of a Lost World will finally be released on 1 November via Fiction Records. As well as the standard edition, a deluxe version will be available featuring a bonus CD of instrumentals and a Blu-Ray with a Dolby Atmos and hi-res stereo mixes of the album. The artwork for the album was conceived by Smith together with long-time Cure collaborator Andy Vella, and features the 1975 sculpture 'Bagatelle' by Janez Print.