# A Forest guitar solo > Robert Smith's guitar solo on A Forest by The Cure (1980) starts at about 4:12. From the album Seventeen Seconds. A new wave classic from the 1980s. Canonical URL: The Cure, 1980, from *Seventeen Seconds*. Solo by *Robert Smith*. Smith's echoing, repetitive leads create an atmosphere of dread that defined the band's early sound. A Forest barely has a solo in the conventional sense; instead Robert Smith builds dread through repetition. His guitar lines are thin, cold and swathed in chorus and echo, circling the same minor-key figures again and again while the bass and drums drive relentlessly underneath. The effect is hypnotic, like being lost among trees that all look the same. This atmospheric, texture-first approach became a blueprint for gothic rock and much of the shoegaze and post-punk revival that followed. Listen for how small changes in the guitar figure, a new note here or a slight shift in rhythm there, feel enormous because everything else is so fixed, and how the long instrumental passages stretch tension rather than resolve it. A Forest by The Cure is featured in our New Wave (#21) list. The solo is played by Robert Smith and the song was released in 1980. ## In our lists - [The 25 Greatest New Wave Guitar Solos](https://greatestsolos.com/list/new-wave/) — #21 - [The Best The Cure Guitar Solos](https://greatestsolos.com/list/the-cure-guitar-solos/) — #2 ## Sources ### Who played the guitar solo on A Forest? Robert Smith played the solo on The Cure's A Forest (1980). --- GreatestSolos ranks the greatest guitar solos by consensus across published lists. Agent guide: [llms.txt](https://greatestsolos.com/llms.txt) · [Sitemap](https://greatestsolos.com/sitemap.xml) · [Dataset (CSV)](https://greatestsolos.com/data/greatest-guitar-solos.csv) · [How we rank](https://greatestsolos.com/method/)