The Cure have always fustrated me, I could listen to a 'best of' all day long but I have always struggled with the albums.
Ditto. It's a shame, because I've burned myself out on singles/b-sides and best-of collections a long, long time ago. I have to be in a very particular kind of mood for most of their albums.
Personal favorites:
Three Imaginary Boys and
Faith. Completely different albums for different moods, though.
I really ought to sit down and go through the band's whole discography in the next year. It's been years since I've listened to much of their music, including compilations, which is a shame, because they were the greatest band in the world to me in 9th-10th grade... incidentally, just before I found The Smiths.
PS, some extra neurosis: I wouldn't call the majority of Cure's discography "upbeat". Not in an emotional sense. Not even the hit singles. I don't care what Fat Bob himself has to say about that. I don't listen to "Friday I'm in Love" and get
happy... The whole reason they appeal/ed to me so much as a moody adolescent/adult baby is because their music was so overwhelmingly affecting, not just mind-numbingly "upbeat".
It's pop music, obviously, but the whole package was more complex than that. The best songs (in general) send chills down my spine and make me feel like I could weep. It's a very bittersweet feeling that "upbeat" is grossly inadequate and one-dimensional to describe. The best pop music encapsulates the human experience in all of its shades of light and darkness, such that it stuns you and makes you understand what it means to be human. I don't consider even the most popular Cure songs "happy" so much as "cathartic".
FWIW, I don't mean to suggest anything about Gregor Samsa's intended meaning of the word "upbeat", I just saw the word--that f***ING word--and felt the urge to vent. It's so hard to explain my frustrations when people close to me don't understand why I get "emotional" and "sad" listening to "happy" and "upbeat" music all the time.