20. Catch (1987)
A little overshadowed by Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me’s pop masterpiece Just Like Heaven, Catch nevertheless has a lovely, shambolic charm all of its own: its pattering drums, violin, unexpected bursts of wah-wah guitar sound as if they were recorded live, and Smith’s vocal as if it was recorded when he was half asleep.
19. The End of the World (2004)
You can see why the Cure’s eponymous 2004 album doesn’t get a lot of love – it’s too long and hopelessly uneven – but it contained at least one no-further-questions classic. Despite the title, it’s the band at their sweetest and least complicated, the stuttering leap from verse to chorus a joy.
18. 10:15 Saturday Night (1978)
This is the song that established Robert Smith as post-punk’s poète maudit of a very British suburban kind of angst – glumly reading a Penguin Modern Classic while everyone else is at a party he wasn’t invited to. Nothing happens in 10:15 Saturday Night except a tap dripping, but it still sounds like a weirdly compelling psychodrama.
17. The Last Day of Summer (2000)
Smith was clearly very proud of Bloodflowers, the album intended as the last in a trilogy also encompassing Pornography and Disintegration. If it didn’t reach the same heights as its predecessors, it’s still packed with good things – most notably this meditation on ageing and loss that now seems to thematically prefigure forthcoming album Songs of a Lost World.
16. Three Imaginary Boys (1979)
Like a lot of debut albums, Three Imaginary Boys was undercooked in parts, but its closing title track was magnificent, mapping a route away from the spindly new wave of Object or Grinding Halt into stranger, more atmospheric and crepuscular waters. And the angsty, climactic guitar solo is fantastic.
Unkempt majesty … The Cure in 1987 (Robert Smith centre front). Photograph: Icon and Image/Getty Images
15. The Love Cats (1983)
Until the release of Friday I’m in Love, The Love Cats was the Cure song everybody knew – a preposterous but utterly charming Aristocats-influenced attempt “to destroy the whole myth of the Cure” that unexpectedly turned into a huge hit. Smith later poured scorn on the whole enterprise: he was wrong.
14. Close to Me (1985)
The moment when Tim Pope’s hugely inventive videos for the Cure reached their peak – the sight of the band crammed into a wardrobe that falls off a cliff, still performing as they drown, is the perfect accompaniment to a song that is somehow claustrophobic and appealingly light and poppy.
13. Alone (2024)
The decidedly mixed quality of preceding Cure albums added a degree of trepidation around their first single in 16 years. It turned out to be a triumph – powerful, elegiac and deeply moving – and the first sign of a new album that represents a startling return to form.
12. In Your House (1980)
On Seventeen Seconds, the wet-weekend ennui of 10:15 Saturday Night seemed to consume the Cure entirely – it occasionally sounds as if Smith can barely muster the wherewithal to sing. That’s not a criticism: the results are strange and unique, as on In Your House, which is morose, hypnotic and eerie in equal measure.
11. A Strange Day (1982)
You could call this Pornography’s poppiest track, although such things are relative. There’s definitely a strong melody, and something approaching a lift when it reaches the chorus, but the tone is dark, the atmosphere disconnected – a drugged-out take on imminent apocalypse. It is also an incredible, haunting piece of work.
10. Lovesong (1989)
What a curious afterlife Lovesong has had – covered by everyone from Adele to blood-spattered hard rockers Jack Off Jill, testament to the simple but powerful declaration of love beneath its understated sound. Adorably, on stage in Hollywood in 2023, Smith turned away from the audience and sang the song to his wife, seated in the wings.
9. The Caterpillar (1984)
What happens when you begin every recording session for an album by taking magic mushrooms? The intriguing psychedelic mess of The Top. Its lead track The Caterpillar felt, delightfully, not unlike an 80s goth take on acid folk, an extraordinary way for a single to sound in a chart then topped by Lionel Richie’s Hello.
8. All Cats Are Grey (1981)
Marc Almond once declared All Cats Are Grey “the perfect ecstasy record”: presumably he had homed in on its understated tune, slowly drifting mood and blanket of synths, the latter a rare moment of warmth on the chilly Faith album. On drugs or not, it’s an incredible song.
7. A Night Like This (1985)
A song that dated back to 1976, A Night Like This is the perfect example of why The Head on the Door shifted perceptions and became the Cure’s international breakthrough. Its despairing lyrics and gloomy mood could have fitted on Faith, but it also packs a sparkling, weirdly elated chorus.
6. Just Like Heaven (1987)
More a miscellany than an album, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me contains almost every aspect of the Cure, but it particularly excels at pop. Just Like Heaven is its jewel. From its cascading guitar lines to the breezy melody, it feels natural and unforced, giddy with love.
5. Pictures of You (1989)
Reportedly inspired by Smith rescuing photos of his wife from a house fire, Pictures of You is alternately suffused with melancholy and regret. It is also very beautiful and oddly uplifting, a confidence in its languid pace, not least as a third of the track has elapsed before the vocals start.
4. Boys Don’t Cry (1979)
Buzzcocks-influenced, deliciously bittersweet and understandably one of the Cure’s most enduring songs: films and novels – and Frank Ocean’s record label – have been named after it, and everyone from Miley Cyrus to Japanese noise legends the Gerogerigegege has covered it. Also, it is apparently Andrew Ridgeley of Wham!’s all-time favourite song.
Simon Gallup, Lol Tolhurst and Robert Smith, of the Cure in Belgium, 1980. Photograph: Gie Knaeps/Getty Images
3. One Hundred Years (1982)
The song that plunges the listener head-first into the claustrophobic, pitch-black, disturbing sound-world of Pornography, via sea-sick guitars, a punishing rhythm track and an opening line that functions as the album’s self-loathing, nihilistic mission statement: “It doesn’t matter if we all die.” Harrowing and cathartic in equal measure, it still sounds astonishing.
2. In Between Days (1985)
Smith has always seemed ambivalent about his natural gift for pop, apparently convinced the dark stuff is what matters. But the combination of the two is what makes the Cure the band they are, and on In Between Days – musically a jubilant rush, lyrically despondent – they entwine to stunning effect.
1 A Forest (1980)
The density of great songs in the Cure’s catalogue makes a list like this almost arbitrary: you could rearrange these songs in virtually any order, or swap entries out for Primary, Charlotte Sometimes, Why Can’t I Be You?, Plainsong or umpteen others. The idea of a “best” Cure song is more arbitrary still, but A Forest holds a special place in fans’ hearts and the band have played it live more than 1,000 times. Urgent and haunted, atmospheric and propulsive, epic but tight, minimal but enveloping … it’s possessed of a power as mysterious as its subject matter.
Songs of a Lost World is released on 1 November