Song · The Cure
“The Hanging Garden” by The Cure
From the album Pornography (1982)
“The Hanging Garden” by The Cure appears on 13 radio countdowns from 3 stations between 1982 and 2010. It was first released in 1982 on the album Pornography. Its best result is #25 on the John Peel's Festive Fifty of 1982. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #77 alternative song of 1982 and #2,089 alternative song of all time.
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"The Hanging Garden" was the only single the Cure took from Pornography, their 1982 album, and it's as close as that suffocating record comes to a stomp. Lol Tolhurst's drums pound like a war dance while Simon Gallup's bass churns and Robert Smith's guitar and keyboards swirl overhead, his voice caught somewhere between a howl and a chant. Smith, Gallup and Tolhurst wrote it together, Smith supplied the words, and Phil Thornalley co-produced it with the band.
It reached number 34 in the UK. The 7-inch carried a live "Killing an Arab" on the flip, and a deluxe edition, sometimes called A Single, also rounded up the studio "A Forest". Chris Gabrin shot the video in London's York House Gardens with the band in masks; Smith later dismissed it as awful, saying the directors, who had made Madness videos, wanted them to look serious when they'd rather have looked like Madness.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | 25 | John Peel (BBC Radio 1) | John Peel's Festive Fifty of 1982 | 50 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 820 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2000 Songs of All-Time (December 1999) | 2000 |
| 2000 | 871 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2001 Songs of All-Time (December 2000) | 2001 |
| 2001 | 873 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2002 Songs of All-Time (December 2001) | 2002 |
| 2002 | 873 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2003 Songs of All-Time (December 2002) | 2003 |
| 2003 | 870 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2004 Songs of All-Time (December 2003) | 2004 |
| 2003 | 1583 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2044 Songs of All-Time (July 2003) | 2044 |
| 2004 | 870 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2005 Songs of All-Time (December 2004) | 2005 |
| 2005 | 871 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2006 Songs of All-Time (December 2005) | 1994 |
| 2007 | 2008 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2008 Songs of All-Time (December 2007) | 2008 |
| 2008 | 1980 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2009 Songs of All-Time (December 2008) | 2009 |
| 2009 | 2009 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2010 Songs of All-Time (December 2009) | 2010 |
| 2010 | 1980 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2011 Songs of All-Time (December 2010) | 2011 |
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