City
Crawley
UK
Crawley's significance rests solely on producing The Cure, formed in 1976 as Easy Cure by Robert Smith and schoolmates at Notre Dame Middle School. While initially post-punk, the band's 1979-1982 evolution through albums like "Seventeen Seconds" and "Pornography"—recorded largely in London but rooted in Crawley's new town mundanity—created goth's more melodic, emotionally vulnerable strand. The town's sterile suburban landscape informed The Cure's aesthetic of beautiful desolation.