Greatest Hits

by

The Cure

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Chances are, if you're on amazon.com looking at the Cure's Greatest Hits you're either:

a. Someone who's interested in getting into the Cure

or

b. A longtime Cure fan, seeing if the chosen songs are worthy.

As a result, this review will have two sides: "New to Cure" and "Cure veteran"

New to Cure:

Ok, here's the deal with the Cure:

1. The band has two sides. Light, poppy, and somewhat happy is one side. Dark, complex, and miserable is the other.

2. Every one of the Cure's albums falls into one of these two categories; there is no gray area.

3. The band's best work is really on their dark albums (i.e. Pornography, Faith, Disintegration), which primarily contain long, drawn-out, complex, beautiful, dark, depressing mood pieces.

4. However, long, complex mood pieces don't tend to make good radio singles, so this Greatest Hits collection is composed almost entirely of their lighter, poppier, happier songs.

5. If you're interested the Cure because you've heard songs like "Boys don't cry", "Close to me", "Just like heaven", "Love song", and "Friday, I'm in love", this collection is perfect for you. It's chock full of irresistibly catchy, poppy, and danceable tunes.

6. However, if you want to see the Cure at their absolute best, pick up the albums Disintegration, Pornography, and Faith. They take repeated listenings to really get into, but trust me, it's worth the effort.

Cure veteran:

If you're like most Cure veterans, you're probably all set to go off on a rant about how this collection basically only contains their poppy stuff and hardly has anything from their darker albums. Well, to that I say, what did you expect? This is a GREATEST HITS collection, not a "best of." We all know how great their dark, depressing stuff is, but the singles from those albums (excluding Disintegration) hardly made any impact on the British charts, let alone the American ones.

Even if you are a Cure veteran, I still say this is a wise buy. There's far too much filler on their happier albums, like Kiss me kiss me kiss me and The head on the door. This Greatest Hits collection, however, gives you a great overview of the best of their lighter side without any of the filler. But, if you have either Staring at the Sea or Galore, I'd recommend skipping this one over and saving your money for the box set. ; )

The Cure have already put out one of the most celebrated best-of's of the rock era, "Staring At The Sea", covering all the singles from their 1979-1985 period (definitely the fans' favorite era). They followed it up a few years back with an admirable companion, "Galore", which picked up where the previous volume left off. Those two CD's give you every single the Cure released up through 1997. I would suggest picking those two up and leaving this one (which only scrapes together a few choice selections from those albums and throws in two new songs) in the dust. If "Greatest Hits" at least contained two of their biggest breakthrough hits from "Disintegration" ("Fascination Street" and "Pictures of You"), I could recommend it for an ultra-casual fan, but without those two songs it barely merits mention. It doesn't even contain anything from "Bloodflowers", their last stuido album, the only one not covered on "Staring At The Sea" or "Galore". The completist will want it for the two new songs (what a [bad move] move by the band and the record company), but for the casual fan, get the previous two compilations and enjoy!