Latest Release
- NOV 1, 2024
- 8 Songs
- Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me · 1987
- Disintegration (Deluxe Edition - Remastered) · 1989
- Disintegration (Deluxe Edition - Remastered) · 1989
- Three Imaginary Boys (Deluxe Edition) · 1979
- Wish · 1992
- Songs Of A Lost World · 2024
- Songs Of A Lost World · 2024
- Seventeen Seconds (Deluxe Edition) · 1980
- Songs Of A Lost World · 2024
- Disintegration (2010 Remaster) · 1989
Essential Albums
- 100 Best Albums The Head on the Door represented The Cure’s first big breakthrough: Buoyed by bona fide pop melodies, the 1985 album marked a definitive break with the claustrophobic intensity of the goth icons’ early-’80s run. Four years later, Disintegration would enlarge their vision to stadium-sized proportions, confirming The Cure’s status as alt-rock titans. Where Disintegration’s predecessor, 1987’s giddy Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, swung wildly between opposing feelings, Disintegration is a deep dive into a singular mood: dreamy, wistful, and deeply melancholy, imbued with all the drama of standing at the railing of a rain-slicked ship as it sails away and gazing at the lover left behind. Disintegration fully sharpened The Cure’s pop instincts: “Pictures of You,” “Lovesong,” and “Fascination Street” are as immediate and indelible as anything in their catalog. But the band have tempered their emotions, so that even the major-key tonalities of a track like “Plainsong” aren’t as blindingly bright as on the previous album; they’re a deeper, richer hue, like beams of sunlight penetrating aquamarine depths. The textures are remarkably lush: a sumptuous mix of guitars and synths so swirled together that it’s tough to say where one instrument ends and the next begins. That oceanic mood carries through in the way songs flow from one to another: The churning chords of “Last Dance” give way to the relative calm of “Lullaby,” and in the back half, the stretch from “Fascination Street” through “Homesick” comprises a kind of suite. There’s an echo of Pornography’s bleakness here, but this time, the descent into despair is strangely welcoming—it’s as though Robert Smith and his bandmates had discovered that on the coldest nights, wrapping up in one’s own loneliness is the only way to stay warm.
- By 1987 the Cure were among the most successful “alternative” rock bands in the world. Their previous album, 1985’s The Head on the Door, had been a massive hit and expectations were high. After years of single-minded leadership, Robert Smith was opening the band up to be more of a democracy and the additional input of his fellow bandmates led to such an overabundance of material that the group determined Kiss Me would need to be a double album. From the long instrumental passages that add to the album’s intense, epic mood to the ornate, ‘80s psychedelic flourishes that color the tracks, Kiss Me is a headphone listener’s dream. “Why Can’t I Be You?” and “Just Like Heaven” are the obvious radio-friendly pop songs, while “The Kiss,” “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep,” “How Beautiful You Are…” and “The Perfect Girl” reflect the heavy romance that replaced the group’s earlier unnerving despair. Emotions continue to dominate with overstated urgency, but it’s with a bit more sense of play.
- The Cure’s Robert Smith lucked out with perfect timing. Just as “alternative rock” was establishing itself as a market, due in part to a growing college radio network that could handle the quirks that terrified commercial, mainstream radio, Robert Smith was writing the most accessible material of his career. Here was a man who had been growing darker by the day, when he suddenly found his lighter side with a series of singles (“The Love Cats,” “Let’s Go to Bed”). But Smith had yet to find a way to bring it to the album format until 1985’s The Head on the Door solved that by subduing Smith’s excesses towards ornate instrumentation and over-emotive vocals with quick, concise pop tunes that still managed a terrifying clamour. “In Between Days,” “A Night Like This” and “Close to Me” virtually define the sweet and sour romance of Smith’s synth-laden, guitar-propelled Goth-pop and the teen angst he mirrored. “Kyoto Song” and “Sinking” serve as epics in miniature, employing the lessons of previous Cure albums but in more economical terms. Pure pop for Goth people.
- 1982
- The Cure’s third album, 1981’s Faith, features a core trio responding to the chiseled minimalism of its predecessor, 1980’s Seventeen Seconds, with a deeper emotional resonance and carefully orchestrated keyboards from leader Robert Smith. Recorded at a time when the band was experimenting with drugs and still establishing itself as an iconoclastic voice, Faith is a thoroughly assured collection of fully-realized compositions that flirt with questions of faith, fate and somber, sobering realities. Yet unlike the emotional excesses that would lead the band to their future extreme heights, the songs here are intense, yet restrained. “Doubt” steps on the accelerator and points towards the Cure sound most familiar to its later fans. However, most of the cuts follow a solemn form. “All Cats Are Grey” posts an eternal yearn in its slow, protruding chords, while “The Funeral Party” marches through a wintry field as the voices echo in what sounds like a futile, existential void.
- 2008
- 2000
- 2024
- 2021
Artist Playlists
- Robert Smith and Co. brought goth to the charts with a heartfelt take on rock and pop.
- Sowing the seeds of goth.
- The perfect voice for delicate gothic pop.
- Seductive alt-rock hooks painted in every shade of black.
- Listen to the hits performed on their blockbuster tour.
- Grab the mic and sing along with some of their biggest hits.
Live Albums
- 1993
More To Hear
- A gloomy yet hopeful goth-rock gem.
- Celebrating 35 years of The Cure's 'Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.'
- Spooky selections from The Cramps, The Misfits, and The Doors.
- Annie soundtracks a student's journey into adulthood.
- Pale Waves pick the 5 Best Songs on Apple Music.
- The hosts talk art and pics.
About The Cure
Few artists have made bleakness sound quite as exquisite as Robert Smith and his cohort—and fewer still have pivoted so easily from the depths of dejection to such weightless, cotton-candied bliss. If all you knew were songs like “Friday I’m in Love,” you might never guess that The Cure had once been kohl-eyed denizens of the shadowiest bat caves in the UK. After channeling guitar-forward post-punk on 1979’s Three Imaginary Boys, they reinvented themselves as gothic spelunkers with Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography—an increasingly claustrophobic trilogy, stretching from 1980 until 1982, that invented progressively darker shades of black with every release. Having perfected the art of despair, The Cure pivoted to pop, after their own fashion. They explored both gloomy psychedelia and jangling acoustic guitars on 1985’s The Head on the Door, winning a new wave of stateside fans with “In Between Days” and “Close to Me” and blowing open the boundaries of what was becoming known as alternative rock. By 1987’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and “Just Like Heaven,” they sounded genuinely, deliriously happy—something inconceivable just a few years before. Yet there was still plenty of angst palpable in their glowering anthems and wall-of-sound production, as well as Smith’s deeply vulnerable, often wounded yelp. The band’s opposing tendencies came to a head on 1989’s Disintegration, The Cure’s masterpiece: The highs (like “Lovesong”) had never sounded more unburdened, nor the lows (“The Same Deep Water as You”) more hopeless. Their widescreen sound filled stadiums; it also influenced a generation of emo bands intent upon fusing visceral sonic power with fathomless psychological depth. In the decades since, The Cure has kept tending their patch of turf, where the intermingling of storm clouds and sunshine yields a singular harvest: intense, expressive, and deliciously dramatic.
- ORIGIN
- Crawley, West Sussex, England
- FORMED
- 1977
- GENRE
- Alternative