The Cure: Classic or Dud?

Anything to add, Ned?

The idea is to encourage people to be forthright in their opinion but it's not a vote or anything. It's a catchier way of saying "what do you think of this band?"

Cheers!

(PS: Dud. A couple of the singles are nice musically, even very good, but they have Smith's horrible smeared moan over the top of them. He sounds like a fourteen-year-old with a splinter in his toe: there's something wheedling about his voice which makes me want to smack him and tell him to get a grip rather than empathise with him.)

Seriously.. though it seems the norm to slag 'em off these days, it's amazing just how much good stuff they have done. 'Boy's Don't Cry'/'3 Imaginary Boys' is a great debut, whichever version you have. Scratchy wired glum-pop. In fact it's all classic up to 'The Top', their first major clunker.

'Head on the Door' is great pop. 'Kiss Me X3' is also great pop ('Just Like Heaven'), except where they try too hard to make great pop and fail ('Hot, Hot, Hot'). 'Disintegration' is their last great album. But not pop. No problem.

My last encounter with The Cure was 'Wild Mood Swings'. I swung my copy back from whence it came - Record and Tape Exchange. Still, 'Galore' sums up the later years nicely.

Anyway I like old Bob, a pop man at heart even in his gloomiest moments.

Classic. And if you disagree with me I'll shove all twenty or so CDRs of rare and odd stuff I have of theirs down your throat and kill you. *proceeds to light candles to huge _Disintegration_ poster in room*

The Cure are a band who, like Depeche Mode and a number of others of that ilk, should have just hung it up on December 31, 1989. Their glory days were in the 1980s, Disintegration should have been their last album. It would have been a perfect ending. Instead, they chose to put out three subpar releases in the 1990s. While Bloodflowers was a definite improvement over Wild Mood Swings (did *anyone* like that album?) and Wish (which came out at the peak of my Cure fandom and still disappointed me), it still wasn't close to the material they released during the 1980s.

Yeah, some of their stuff is whiny and pretentious. But I think they manage to pull it off reasonably well, and I think the whininess and the pretentiousness will make them staples of every sad-sack high school kid for the next thirty years, whether they continue to release new albums or not. (And hopefully they won't, judging from the poor quality of their most recent albums--I think that the more bad stuff they release, the less "legendary" they'll become.)

By the way, I *was* a teenage goth girl. I was also an early-20s goth girl. I own a velvet and lace cape and little pointy boots and black lipstick. Heh.

_Wild Mood Swings_ is more problematic. It's a very erratic album and contains a couple of songs that never should have seen the light of day ("Mint Car", "Return"). However, it also contains the absolutely marvelous "The 13th", "Want", "Gone!" and "Jupiter Crash". Some judicious editing (and swapping some album tracks for b-sides) would make this a much better album.

For me, _Bloodflowers_ compares very well to their 80's output. It seems that the group got back into a good songwriting groove for this album, which is particularly evident on "Out Of This World", "The Loudest Sound", "The Last Day Of Summer", "Bloodflowers", and "Watching Me Fall" (Cure cliches and all). The album has a strong sense of flow and there are no embarrassing attempts to rewrite "Friday I'm In Love". It was a good ending for them, assuming that Robert's latest pronouncements about the band's demise are actually true this time.

There are individual songs I don't like, and _Wild Mood Swings_ is easily my least- favorite of their albums, but I'd be hard-pressed to say that I actively dislike any of the Cure's albums.

They have many good tunes. However, they have many bad ones, viz "Friday I'm In Love".

Still, at their best they show an impressive ability to make both poppy goth jumpathons and total doomfests.

I had a girlfriend once who was into these boys hard and she used to play is it 'Pictures of You' (?) over and over and over (a sort of pining for a lost love I think; not me, incidentally). Anyway, it used to bore the hell out of me, not to mention what felt like a large hole in my brain.

The thing is, with the Cure, it's like the Manic Street FUCKING Preachers syndrome - people who like 'em don't just like 'em, they fucking LOVE 'em, and think they're prophets or something. No, they are miserable, half-goths with absolutely nothing to say and even less charisma.

That said, I am admit that I am hardly familiar know their canon, since I can't bear exposure to it for protracated periods.

Still; DUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUD

Hmm, having said that, I do get riled when someone fails to 'get' my favourite bands and indulges in the kind of mindless attack I have already posted against The Cure. Yet, I feel that certain bands are wont to attract a more dependent following, who hang the band's music like metaphorical rosaries. And I'm not sure that even among my most beloved artists, there are those which I could hold in such equally mindless esteem.

What say you?

DUD

Yet I do wonder how much my own nosatlgia plays a role. I still think Wish is great, despite every. review. ever. written. Maybe if I hadn't listened to it for the 1st time as a teenager travelling thru Europe with schoomates I'd think differently.

Also, I really really like the Wolfgang Press song on _Lonely is an Eyesore_, but I've heard their recordings are pretty patchy. Any recommendations there?

the "cure=suburbia" part of Michael Bracewell's England Is Mine is one of the best things ever!

Classic, BTW. Again, my mid-teens coincided with Disintegration and I was full-on obsessed for a couple of years. I bought a shedload of albums at Oxfam last year, and a friend and I drove our GF/wives insane by listening, back to back, to 17 Seconds, Faith, Pornography and the Top. Divorce was on the horizon by the end of that evening.

Thing is, there are SO many B-sides and rarities which have officially surfaced that they'd have to put out a box set. As it is, if the remasters that are surfacing next year are going to include bonus discs for each with room for other oddities, then that will partially settle the problem.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-cure-mixed-up/

This was well written...

They gave it a 8.0 which is fine but they gave The Top a 6.9, The Top is a much better album.

We haven't polled the s/t or this, that I know of, on my list now.

I really loathe that record - not for the sacrilege but because the remixes are generally godawful.

I will allow the Closer mix of "Close To Me" though.

I like the beeps in the Fascination Street mix, but that's pretty much it.

In the mid-90s I knew (and made fun of) a guy who owned exactly two Cure CDs: Wild Mood Swings and this - the two very worst Cure albums at that point in time.

The mix of Inbetween Days is great

The Caterpillar, not so much

the 'hello goodbye mix' they did for "a night like this" on the deluxe reissue in 2018 is really good.

Mixed Up was my first or second Cure CD, from Columbia House. I still have a lot of affection for it although I don’t go back to it often.

At one point around the time of its original release, I saw a CD boxed set of Mixed Up in a record store but it didn’t explain the contents. It looked like the regular album split up over multiple CDs? I was really confused by it.

Mixed Up is one of the CDs I listened to most growing up, still love basically the entire thing.I've written about the album too in this as-yet-unfinished collection of interview album features. Mostly it's an excuse to get across how much I like the album and its spongelike existence in utopian 1990 but using Robert's comments as signposts. His dislike of the TC & Benny remix is really the only shared observation (RS dismissed it as resembling UB40, who he never missed an opportunity to trash).

yes, cow. that exists and it is a ridiculously beautiful package.

THANK YOU! That has haunted me for 30 or so years. Never bothered to google it.

Ok, it has a Why Can’t I Be You remix that isn’t on the standard release. I guess the logic of the packaging was pairing songs as though they were on 12” singles?

The Pitchfork article was really good, I haven’t been on there in ages.

The WCIBY remix is not a new one and it is on the standard release, it just doesn’t fit on CD

All the KM and Disintegration mixes were available on 12”/CD singles before Mixed Up came out IIRC

yeah In Between Days and Caterpillar are the only new mixes on the album iirc (great ones on the b-sides though) — A Forest and The Walk are completely new recordings by RS and Mark Saunders

Close To Me as well?

Yeah that was different to the 1985 12” mix

and of course Never Enough was a new song altogether

That was definitely the first version of "Caterpillar" I knowingly heard and it made *very* little impression. It was a weirdly long time before I came to the surprising conclusion that the original single was, like, the best song evah. (Actually, I'm not even sure I knew The Top existed before the internet. It always puzzled me that "Lovecats" and "Let's Go to Bed" were super-huge in AUS when I was 7 or whatever but an entire LP had passed me by when I next heard them with "Inbetween Days".)

"Mixed Up" always felt like a "New Jersey" to me. "Disintegration" (and the tour) were so huge that I bet "Mixed Up" was the first Cure album bought day-one for a lot of folks. I wonder what might have happened had "Wild Mood Swings" come next instead of "Wish."

high school me is still extremely pissed off they followed up Disintegration with Mixed Up

I actually remember the date I bought my first Cure tape (Standing on the Beach, Dec. 27, 1990). I then acquired most of the albums on cassette or LP and Mixed Up may have been the first Cure CD I bought. I would play it on my parents' JVC boombox, which had a window to see the disc spinning; I loved how the splashed-paint artwork turned into this whirr of color.

I also admired the 5CD package mentioned above—I seem to remember it being like $100 at the local independent record store, and I wondered who it was for. This was also the record store where I brought the CD5 of "Pictures of You" to the counter on one of those visits when I felt like I had to buy SOMETHING and, well, there are two live tracks I didn't have (both of which later turned up on Entreat). The clerk, a jockish beefy blond guy, bent forward and said "you have no idea how much of this snot they put out." I did actually have some idea, but, being 12 years old, nonetheless felt deeply humiliated.

hahaha I remember getting shit from record store clerks for buying Cure stuff all the time, but then they'd be like "why don't you buy something good like the new Beastie Boys?" and I'd be genuinely confused, like why would you think I would want that I am buying the Cure, Legendary Pink Dots, and Skinny Puppy tapes my dude, you are way off the map

i hated those conversations so much i would do anything to avoid them (like subscribe to BMG or Columbia House or go to the mall or Best Buy where they mostly left me alone)

I fondly remember the glorious year when Best Buy started selling CDs as loss leaders AND 4AD got domestic distribution set up, I went absolutely wild vacuuming up all those $8.99 CDs that had previously cost $23.99 on import

(and yes, the cashiers there were absolutely indifferent to my musical selections)

shoutout to the wherehouse music shop over in sparks nv. it probably varied by location, but they had an entire windowless display wall that ran the length of the store with those moveable wall mounts. that's where they put all of the box set inventory along the main part and where i, probably all of ten years old, first saw that set. i couldn't see the price tag but i remember thinking:
.1 they have it way on the top because that's where the expensive things are
.2 "that's scary music for people who do drugs"

wherehouse was a good chain shop. always friendly to fans of imports and rarer stuff; sam goody in my neighborhood would never have had something like that just sitting in general shelfstock. i didn't realize how rare that mixed up thing was until years later. it stayed on the shelf up there for at least a year.

they also had a section in the very back of that display wall for local bands and consignments - awesome. i would always go back there and read the little band bios they would make for the display. some of them were, uhm, quite detailed and offputting lol.

Still remember being crushed the day I saw the "To the Sky" 12" but didn't have enough cash on hand to buy it (and it was something insane like $40 anyway)

To me, Mixed Up wasn't a follow up to Disintegration at the time. Just a compilation of remixes that I already owned on 12" singles, plus 2 new remixes and 2 rerecordings. Kind of something to help us wait until the next album.
I liked the new remixes of "Let's Go To Bed" and "Primary" that they didn't include on it. "Just Like Heaven", not so much.

OTM, I was in the same headspace

3rd Bass had laid the groundwork two months earlier with The Cactus Re/Visited

(plus Madonna in 1987, Blondie in 88, Bobby Brown and Jody Watley and Milli Vanilli in 1989, earlier Soft Cell and INXS and Machinations and Billy Idol and Eurythmics and Art Of Noise and Human League and the B-52s and Pet Shop Boys and UB40 and)

Yeah same here. Just a fine little stopgap plus two killer new songs across all releases, “Never Enough” and “Harold and Joe,” which are both great in their own right!

I like "Never Enough", but I love "Harold & Joe" ! Such a fun vocal from Robert. I think it would've had a lot of radio play had it been the A side.

We considered it a cheap cash-in unworthy of the Cure, it would have been fine just releasing Never Enough as a single along with Entreat!

“Harold and Joe” is one of my favorite songs. So whatever was happening at the time, we got two good things out of it.

Mixed Up and Wish were the first Cure I listened to as a teenager and I’ve never understood why they’re so disliked, especially MU, which seems like a perfectly good alternative Best Of. That Kevorkian remix of HHH is better than the original imo

would have been fine just releasing Never Enough as a single along with Entreat!

half a dozen singles, a live album with multiple chase formats, a boxed set of singles, a new standalone single, a remix album, three more singles off the remix album, a remastered video edition of the remix album, a classic cover on a weird rare album you have to buy to hear the one song, an all-new collector-focused video art piece / doco… who tf do they think they are, Charli XCX?

yeah but all those releases plus a ticket to see the Cure live costs 1/4 the price of a Charlie XCX ticket

Funny how what was mostly a stop gap release, to fill the time between album releases, felt like a distinctive era (the flower shirts, the amazing visuals, the droplets of new music on the video tapes). I loved that period despite never really caring much about Mixed Up

Quite the summation there sic, that onslaught broke my Cure obsession, they suddenly felt commodified. I faithfully kept up with the first few singles but by the time of the Doors cover on Rubáiyát I just let it go. Can't remember if I bought Mixed Up - there was a copy in my share house but I don't think it was mine, the 12" of "Never Enough"/"Harold and Joe" was plenty.

THE CURE'S 31 SHOW FESTIVAL SUMMER CONCLUDES THIS EVENING WITH A HEADLINE SET AT ROCK EN SEINE.
YOU CAN WATCH THE FULL SHOW FROM PARIS VIA A WORLDWIDE LIVE STREAM FROM 8:55 (CEST) / 7:55 (BST) BY CLICKING THE LINK BELOW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBN_aFXlW2w

www.youtube.com / live / yBN_aFXlW2w

Recent attendee of shows: one Christina Hendricks, in Glasgow, with some notable friends:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DcqYzCzDigx/

In Edinburgh, more accurately! The perils of reading too quickly.

who are the notable friends?

Rachel Goswell, Yasi Salek, some other people whose names I don't recognize.

I have now ddg'd Yasi Salek and downloaded an episode of Bandsplain.

^ caught the last song of the Paris set, rewound to the start, and they nixed the stream a couple of minutes later. Appresh Stan's attention to noting them itt across the tour!

The band have been selling fan-designed posters for most shows across the last four years -- the Paris gig features a sequel to the 2022 poster by the same artist, but also two versions of an Undy Vella poster, with proceeds to the Fondation de France -- pink version and blue version

TCDB (The Cure DataBase) has the streams archived - https://odysee.com/@TCDB:7/2026-08-30-FR-Saint-Cloud-Rock-en-Seine-v1:a

Edinburgh was great. I'm going to be wondering forever what went on with the guy wearing a She-Ra t-shirt who got kicked out during the second song

New Magazine:

MOJO’s Cure Special Is Out Now!

Packed with in-depth features, classic and rare interviews, plus a guide to all @thecure’s albums, MOJO The Collectors’ Series: The Cure is in UK shops and available for delivery wherever you are now.

ORDER HERE: https://t.co/xRmE3HqHIW pic.twitter.com/QkHQ1vEMM3

— MOJO Magazine (@MOJOmagazine) September 3, 2026

MOJO’s New Cure Special Is Out Now!
MOJO The Collectors’ Series: The Cure is in UK shops and available for delivery wherever you are now!
https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/mojos-new-cure-special-is-out-now/

Presenting MOJO The Collectors’ Series: The Cure, a 132-page deluxe special edition packed with in-depth features, classic and rare interviews, plus a guide to all the band’s albums. MOJO The Collectors’ Series: The Cure is in UK shops and available for delivery wherever you are now