Album · The Cure
The Top by The Cure
The Top is an album by The Cure, released in 1984. 4 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 25 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “The Caterpillar”, on 21 lists with a best position of #338.
The Top, the Cure's fifth album, came out on Fiction in 1984, and it sounds like Robert Smith emptying his head straight onto tape. After the black weight of Pornography, Smith had started letting pop into the band's music, but here the pop comes out warped and feverish, a psychedelic jumble of skittering rhythms, odd textures and that yelping, sulking voice. He co-produced it with Chris Parry and David M. Allen across Genetic, Trident and Eden studios, with Lol Tolhurst still aboard and Andy Anderson on drums.
"Shake Dog Shake" kicks the door in, "The Caterpillar" flutters and skips like a nursery rhyme gone strange, and "Give Me It" and "Bird Mad Girl" twitch at the edges. It entered the UK chart at number ten, and the band took it out on a major British tour that wound up with three nights at London's Hammersmith Odeon.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from The Top on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Caterpillar | 21 | #338 | – | 1989–2014 | |
| 2 | Bird Mad Girl | 1 | #1607 | – | 2003 | |
| 3 | Shake Dog Shake | 2 | #461 | – | 1989–1991 | |
| 4 | Give me it | 1 | #1913 | – | 2003 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.