Would-Be King was a short-lived, obscure band from Fayetteville, Arkansas. They are probably best known for their song "The Cure," which won an online battle of the bands contest and still floats around various p2p networks to this day. Unfortunately the song usually is tagged backwards and thus is mistaken for something done by The Cure.
Would-Be King was made up of University of Arkansas students Ron Williams (drums), Jody Smith (bass), Joe Fulton (guitar), and David Hartsell (voice). Their music would best be described as alternative/college rock, with the main focus of each song being the singer's voice.
They released one album, "Irradiate" in 1998 on Melodrama Records. The track listing follows:
- Swellhead
- Black Fruit
- Crawl-space
- Judas
- Hateful
- Monster
- Childlike
- Scandal Pup
- Can you hear me?
- Jean
- Resuscitation
This information was mostly taken from the liner notes to their CD, which also lists a non-working web site: www.wouldbeking.com (the Wayback Machine lists the only cached copy of that site as dated Nov. 1998 - http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.wouldbeking.com).