After reading through this thread about Whiter Shade of Pale it reminded me that I have been curious for a long time about the meaning of The Cure song “Hot! Hot! Hot!”. I’ve asked several friends, but we always decide we can’t put our finger on it. So now that I am in the presence of so many willing to share their knowledge… would anyone care to speculate?
Here is a link to the lyrics: Hot! Hot! Hot!
I always assumed (like most of the album) it was sexual: with orgasm metaphors. But now that I’ve read the lyrics, I have a feeling that hunch is all limp. Those lyrics are gonna start grating on me now, until the point where I scream, ‘Get this fucking song out of my head, I wish Robert Smith was dead’.
Love strikes?
Epilepsy?
Drug usage?
At the time I listened to those lyrics, I imagined Smith was talking of migraine. Some sufferers of migraine, like Hildegard von Bingen have compared their migraine-attacks to being struck by lightning, being touched by God, and some people pass out from attacks like those. That fits much of the lyrics.
That, and your mention of epilepsy I never thought of. That’s a good call. It does fit.
Love, sex, and drugs never seemed to fit to me because he repeats in the song “…and I never went back”. It seems that love, sex and drugs are things you WOULD want to go back to.
Well, I had to post because I always had a different idea about it. I always thought that the lightning was a metaphor for powerful music. What gave me that idea was the first verse talking about:
When I first heard it I thought it was a reference to the Beatles playing in the Cavern Club. A kind of lightning certainly struck there! Smith was born in 1959, and like a lot of other British kids in that era who later went into music, he was probably influenced by the Beatles. He’d have grown up right in their heyday. So I always assumed that’s what he meant.
I don’t know about the lightning at sea or in bed, but even if he did mean the Beatles in the first verse it doesn’t mean he had to stick to that theme of actual bands throughout the whole song. He tends to be kind of vague anyway.
This is not an answer to the question, but Robert Smith discusses making each album here.
I always just figured it was drugs. Brief, explosive high, a sudden crash, and by the last verse, it’s left him for dead. I definitely don’t think it’s epilepsy or migraines, though. “Hey, hey, hey, well I like it when that lightning comes / Hey, hey, hey, yes I like it a lot.” Doesn’t fit.
drugs!
R. Smith, from cure news Number 13, August 1992
From the lyrics to “hot hot hot” on the “stiff as toys and tall as men” Cure site. They have a little blurb above a lot of songs with quotes from Robert about what the songs are about.
What does HE know? 
Well, look!ninjas, migraines and epilepsy do fit. The Oliver Sacks article where he points out that Hildegard von Bingen suffered from migraines, he also quotes another migrainesufferer, Fyodor Dostojevski, who thought the brief flashes of extacy this migraines gave him were well worth the discomfort. Also migrainesufferers often experience visual hallucinations.
From what 've read, Robert was mostly into psychedelic drugs, not opiates. Psychedelic drugs don’t give you a high, just weird states of mind and weird dreamlike imagery. Not necessary pleasant, although you can “like it a lot” nevertheless. So, LSD fits the lyrics, as well, as others have said.
Psychedelic drugs don’t give you a high? What is your definition of a high then? I disagree about that statement but concur that the lyrics are probabley about acid or maybe something weird and funky like DMT.
I did know about the auras and other visual hallucinations - it’s just that I’d never heard of anyone who enjoyed a migraine. In my experience, it usually involves a lot of pain, nausea, and lying around in dark, quiet rooms waiting for the medicine to kick in. But there are exceptions to everything, and I guess Dostoevsky was one. Perhaps Robert Smith is another; I couldn’t say.
I know less about epilepsy than I do about migraines, so I can’t really address that. I’ve never heard that Robert Smith has epilepsy, although the lead singer of Joy Division did.
Ok, so if it’s a migraine or epileptic attack that is enjoyable, that would fit with the lyrics. Man, that is obscure, though.
I was on the side of it being about sex or drugs, but could not explain why he would “never go[went] back”. Can anyone who believes the song is about sex or drugs (or even listening to rock music) explain that one?
[Hijack]Oops; not-native-speaker-error. I always took “high” to mean “being in an euphoric, or blissful state of mind, caused by drugs”. Like caused by opiates or cocaine. Acid is different in that respect. But I guess it means “under the influence of any drug that causes an altered mood/perception”. Well, you learn something every day. [/end hijack]
Pussycow, I’m cluching at straws here, but couldn’t it mean Robert had involuntary LSD-flashbacks? Or maybe the proverbial “bad trip”?
Ooh Maastricht, THAT is one I never thought of. Good idea.
I think its probably meant to be a story told from the perspective of madness - Robert Smith has that kind of theme in his look and the cures songs have that kind of theme… Maybe based on a lunatic asylum story, or that kind of thing, Im thinking about bohemian writers, artists etc, which the cure definitely fit into…
Robert Smith is a Climate Change Scientist, clearly.
Supposedly a quote by Robert:
“This was about three strange sexual experiences: in the basement of a club, on a ferry and at home in my bedroom. Lightning striking was an analogy. I was thinking of a children’s book - Earthfast (by William Mayne) about a boy hit by lightning and going back in time - and of that bloke in the Guinness Book Of Records who’s been hit numerous times. I told Tim Pope I wanted us to look like a lowdown funky soul band. He translated “lowdown” as “dwarf” and “soul band” as “black-and-white”. Polydor said it wouldn’t get shown. It didn’t.”