(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sat 28 March 2026 12:30, UK
Like many rock legends, Robert Smith has a complicated relationship with some of his own material. While some of it remains among his all-time favourites, other parts he’s not quite so sure about.
That said, The Cure are pretty unique when it comes to which records are celebrated the most or recognised as the band’s best, mainly because there seems to be some sort of collective agreement about which records sit at the top – Disintegration and Pornography – and which are more difficult to place into any kind of order.
As with most records that stand the test of time, however, these orders are also likely to change from time to time. For instance, nothing beats hearing something like Wish for the first time, but records like Bloodflowers and Wild Mood Swings become richer with each listen, revealing new pieces of the wonderful Cure kaleidoscope, the more familiar the music becomes.
Smith understands this perhaps better than anybody, but as the creator of these masterpieces, he also has his own favourites, as well as those he perhaps didn’t enjoy so much at the time, but which he grew his own unique appreciation for. Many of those he ranks highly are also ones that were received differently at the time, or ones he didn’t necessarily think would perform that well commercially.
For instance, one of Smith’s favourite Cure records is Pornography, despite it being viewed as “commercial suicide” at the time. He also loves Bloodflowers, even though it’s generally not considered among the band’s best records, not even close. Still, the record ranks highly in his mind because not only was it intended to be the third in the trilogy with Pornography and Disintegration, but it also has “a lyricism that makes it compare favourably to the other two”.
In terms of others, like Wild Mood Swings, Smith has a rather unique view that places them in a different light, even if he acknowledges specific issues with some parts of the sound or creative direction. With Wild Mood Swings, for instance, Smith noted that it was held back by its own length, and that ‘Gone and Round and Round’ shouldn’t have been on there at all, but still claims it to be melodically and lyrically one of his favourite Cure records ever.
However, all things considered, there’s only one record that Smith once hailed as the absolute pinnacle, them at the “peak of their powers”, and it was their live album, Show. While he loves many of their other records, ones like Wish marked a turning point where he started to “lose my enthusiasm”, almost like he was coasting and not taking any creative risks.
With Show, however, Smith knew it was a defining moment – the one that came right before, as he put it, the moment when “the band would fall apart”. As he explained to Rolling Stone, “The Show concert in Detroit was the band at the peak of its powers. We had been together at that point for eight years, and it was so tight, but I set up the film because I knew that after the Wish tour the band would fall apart.”
Recorded over two nights in 1992, Show spotlighted material from the band’s best albums, including Wish, Disintegration, The Head on the Door, and the one that broke them into America in the first place, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. Thus, while a few moments were worth paying attention to after, there’s no denying that the years leading up to these shows were no doubt, as Smith recalled, The Cure at the very top of their game.
