- Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me · 1987
- The Cure: Greatest Hits · 1979
- Wish · 1992
- Disintegration (Deluxe Edition) · 1989
- Disintegration (Deluxe Edition) · 1989
- The Cure: Greatest Hits · 1985
- Wish (30th Anniversary Edition) · 1984
- The Head On the Door · 1985
- Seventeen Seconds (Deluxe Edition) · 1980
- Disintegration (Remastered) · 1989
- The Cure: Greatest Hits · 1983
- The Cure: Greatest Hits · 1982
- The Cure: Greatest Hits · 1980
Essential 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 catalogue. 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.
- 1982
- 2008
- 2000
Artist Playlists
- Timeless indie pop and gothic rock melancholia form an epic musical legacy.
- 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.
Singles & EPs
Live Albums
- 1993
Compilations
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 channelling 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 have 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, England
- FORMED
- 1977
- GENRE
- Alternative