#116: 'Disintegration' by The Cure

Hmm.

So, Disintegration, Derek, what's your history with this album? Have you listened to it before? Is this what your parents playing this around the house? No,

not really.

I have very little background with this one.

I knew like the big singles going in, like Pictures of You and Lo's song,

but

otherwise pretty unfamiliar with it.

this album specifically and the cure more generally i knew them as like oh there's the goth band i know they're more poppy stuff like friday i'm in love in between days and you know just like heaven just like heaven

i believe

but they're more like classically goth sounding albums like this one don't really know it so this was coming in with fresh ears

Yeah, that's about where I'm starting with.

I think I maybe have listened to, like, a full album of theirs a handful of times, but not in any recent memory.

It's not, like, a part of my regular rotation.

So, yeah, same thing.

Know the hits.

Yeah, I got to get in, see what all this hubbub's about, you know?

Yeah.

Is Disintegration really the best album ever? But speaking of all the hubbub, this album came out on May 2nd, 1989.

So, Derek, why don't you tell me, what was going on back then? Hey!

It is May 1989, and the number one song is Like a Prayer by Madonna.

The number one movie at this time was Pet Sematary.

In world news, following the death of reformist leader Hu Yaobang, pro-democracy protests begin in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

The communist government eventually ends the protests by killing civilians in the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4th, 1989.

Elsewhere in global politics, Hungary's reform government cut a 150-mile-long hole in the fence on their border between the country and Austria.

By the end of the year, nearly 30,000 residents of East Germany would use this passage to defect to the West.