Why is there no thread for The Cure's Disintegration?

holy fuck 21 years ago

I actually don't know why "Lovesong" was the crossover hit – payola? lyrical simplicity? a confluence of all these things and others? ("Just Like Heaven" gets a hundred times more airplay now). I know it was my least favorite single by a country mile; it's one of those songs whose charms you exhaust real quick.

From the same Turkey Shoot:

GLORIA ESTEFAN: Cuts Both Ways (Epic) I was perplexed to catch myself enjoying parts of this until I recognized the feels-so-good-when-it-stops syndrome--who wouldn't perk up at a sleek salsa montuno or tap-dancing synperc break when the alternative is Karen Carpenter with an unlocked pelvis? "Get On Your Feet" importunes too much--these rhythms aren't gonna get you. C

I always liked "Karen Carpenter with an unlocked pelvis" but wonder if he felt bad after her accident.

Gloria's, that is.

holy fuck 21 years ago

amazing for a 21st-anniversary reissue of an album

lol I old too

oh shit, this live version of "Homesick"

I actually don't know why "Lovesong" was the crossover hit

It was a question of timing. Their popularity had been growing in North America since The Head On The Door and they had their first Top 40 hit with "Just Like Heaven". It was obvious that they were going to be big with their next album and that they were going to have a hit as soon as they put out a "radio friendly" single. I was also disappointed at the time that it happened with "Lovesong", which I didn't like as much as most of their previous singles.

Can't wait to hear this!!! So anxious.

I actually don't know why "Lovesong" was the crossover hit

Because it's a hugely accessible, universally identifiable, catchy as fuck pop song?

"Inbetween Days" and "Just Like Heaven" were too!

It was a question of timing. Their popularity had been growing in North America since The Head On The Door and they had their first Top 40 hit with "Just Like Heaven". It was obvious that they were going to be big with their next album and that they were going to have a hit as soon as they put out a "radio friendly" single. I was also disappointed at the time that it happened with "Lovesong", which I didn't like as much as most of their previous singles

yup.

this is like asking why "beth" was kiss's breakout hit and not "rock and roll all nite" or "strutter"

RESPECT THE LOVE BALLAD

Da Croup OTM, I mean c'mon -- it's exactly what it is, a catchy pop song on a big breakout album!

And yeah, still great, this whole thing.

Really my only regret about this album is that not everyone went as batshit over "Lullaby" as they did over "Lovesong". I get WHY, but it still is kind of a bummer to the 16-year-old in my heart.

Combine Tim Pope's videos for both songs and there you go, Film Studies 101 -- Introduction to Freudianism

i think the video to lullaby was my intro to the cure, and holy shit did it scare me as a 9 or 10 year old.

I love "Lullaby" more than anything on the album – such a fantastic sound. The remix is even more of a great thing.

weirdly, mixed up was the first cure album i bought though!

"...beginning with....ESSSSSS"

If it wasn't for "Never Enough, I'd feel like they never actually recovered from doing the "Lullaby" video. Like, they went "okay, we have reached our platonic ideal so there's really no point in trying on any other video we do" or something; I can't think of any other explanation for the "Friday I'm In Love", "Wrong Number" or "Taking Off".

Although I'd forgotten about the video for "The 13th" lolol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N9piZjt_k8

Also I really really hate the single mix of "Lullaby"; I think it kind of ruins the song.

I hope the spider man has you for dinner tonight.

Maybe it's nostalgia talking, but I love "Never Enough."

That's not nostalgia, that is a fucking SLEDGEHAMMER of a song.

"Never Enough" remains fantastic, I remember at the time it was claimed this was them 'going baggy'

I love that stuttered guitar bit on the Mixed Up version.

Also the single had a killer B-side in "Harold and Joe" and a remix of "Let's Go to Bed" that should have been on the main album, really.

i think Never Enough was what convinced me to buy Mixed Up -- still love that song.

The video for "The 13th" really makes me regret that its the only time they worked with sophie mueller. I might have even gotten into later singles if she was there to help.

Really my only regret about this album is that not everyone went as batshit over "Lullaby" as they did over "Lovesong".

NEW ILM POLL: Most accessible, instantly relatatable Robert Smith lyric?

"However far away, I will always love you" - 85

...
..
.

"The spiderman is having me for dinner tonight" - 2

"I stoned the only girl I loved, and drowned her deep in sodomy" 15

okay if that was the actual lyric, I would be even more into that song

I can't imagine how fucked up my life would have been at fifteen had it been the actual lyric.

lots of otm-ness here. Absolutely loved Never Enough when it came out shame they immediately dropped the main riff when they played it live

and Ned otm indeed - the LOGTB remix was my favorite from that project. Such a strange and intriguing vibe from that version

Hearing that and Orbit's Shiver mix of "Inbetween Days" made me think Mixed Up was going to be much, much better than it actually was.

uggghhhh mixed up

still pissed off about that mix of "The Caterpillar" tbh

hahahaha YES YOU ARE CORRECT

tbh Inbetween Days and yes Caterpillar were the most horrendous things on that

haha totally loved mixed up when it was the only cure album i owned back in elementary school, not even sure where my copy went after I finally heard the originals.

The best ones were left off ("Lets Go To Bed" and "Primary"), but I don't dislike the "Caterpillar" remix.

The album versions of "Why Can't I Be You" and "Hot Hot Hot" are much more exciting than the Mixed Up versions.

Finally holding a copy in my hot little hands, thanks to the wonderful Mrs. via/chicago. Ironic that such a notoriously depressing album would be the bright spot of my otherwise craptastic afternoon.

Happy 25th.

I freakin love the Cure. This was the first Cure album I ever heard, I found the vinyl used at a thrift store, and ended up giving it to a goth girl I had a crush on for Xmas. It's a shame it's such a nice day outside, it almost doesn't feel appropriate to play the album in such weather.

This will be wildly unpopular, but this record doesn't even make my Top 5 for Cure albums.. It's all a bit "samey" to me, but in a far different way than Faith or Seventeen Seconds were. No doubt that Disintegration paints some vast and desolate landscapes, and they are far more sophisticated than those displayed on those earlier somber albums. I mean, the love and longing oozes from beautifully stretched-out themes -- a very new trick for a band a decade in. I guess i like his more tortured material, or, sometimes the more bubble-gum-ey fun stuff.

Don't get me wrong, it was a great new place to move the material and it sold tons of copies, but really pointed to the beginning of the end in my view. For my money, the never were as lethal as they were with Kiss Me.

this weekend on a whim (if slightly inspired by the v tedious discussion of how much jason cooper sucks) i decided to listen to every cure record in order, and hitting disintegration was prob the most dramatic shift in the sequence; it's not really an aesthetic shift i think (it pretty clearly follows up on a lot of the ground staked out on kiss me and besides the most dramatic aesthetic shift in the cure discography is prob still pornography->"let's go to bed"); it's more about scale, where kiss me was a ton of very tonally distinct songs squeezed down into an excitable mercurial space where they could sit together dissonantly and constantly surprise!!! you, every song here is enormous and is almost its own individual space, so that the album feels to me like a series of linked domes in which different weather patterns are preserved

i've been mostly drawn to the expanded entreat on the deluxe reissue bc i've lived with the original album for fifteen years and it differs enough (especially in the shimmering guitar interludes on "pictures of you") that it's like hearing it from a slightly adjusted angle (it's also, as documented upthread, a really excellent performance), which is allowing me to additionally recognize that, even as my tastes have developed a lot since first hearing this at fifteen years old, disintegration and "plainsong" in particular contain so much of what i still value about music, they're like the permanent center of something around which the surface has drifted and warped considerably, and it still enriches and informs that drifting and warping. anyway, <3 u disintegration, i thought faith was maybe my new favorite cure record, but nope

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G5YguuNSJg

A fine celebration. :-)