Album · The Cure
Pornography by The Cure
Pornography is an album by The Cure, released in 1982. 6 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 19 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “The Hanging Garden”, on 13 lists with a best position of #25.
Pornography, the Cure's fourth studio album, came out on Fiction in 1982, and it sounds like a band at the bottom of a well. Phil Thornalley came in as producer for the first time, working alongside Robert Smith, Simon Gallup and Lol Tolhurst at RAK Studios from January to April 1982, and the sessions were grim: heavy drug use, the members at each other's throats and Smith sunk in depression, all of it poured straight onto the tape.
From the crash of "One Hundred Years" to the tribal thud of "The Hanging Garden", it's thick, pounding, suffocating stuff, Smith howling over walls of guitar and drums. It closed out the dark phase that began with Seventeen Seconds. Gallup left afterwards and the Cure lightened up considerably. The critics hated it at the time, but it was their biggest album yet, number eight in the UK, and it's now seen as a cornerstone of gothic rock.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Pornography on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Hanging Garden | 13 | #25 | – | 1982–2010 | |
| 2 | One Hundred Years | 1 | #205 | – | 2024 | |
| 3 | A Strange Day | 2 | #33 | – | 1982–2003 | |
| 4 | The Figurehead | 1 | #28 | – | 1982 | |
| 5 | A Short term Effect | 1 | #1556 | – | 2003 | |
| 6 | Siamese Twins | 1 | #1700 | – | 2003 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.