Wish

About the Album

The Cure’s ninth studio album — a mix of sprawling, shoegaze-tinged atmospherics and bright, hooky pop, that balanced the band’s signature melancholy with some of their most approachable songwriting (including the massive hit “Friday I’m in Love”). It’s their most commercially successful studio album and marked the end of one era of the band lineup while capturing them at a high point of popularity.

The band recorded Wish in late 1991 / early 1992 at The Manor in Oxfordshire; sessions were relatively peaceful and communal compared with some earlier periods — the band lived and worked together during the record, resulting in a dense, band-oriented sound. Coming off the overwhelmingly praised Disintegration (1989), The Cure were at both a critical and commercial peak; Wish retained the atmospheric textures of earlier work while steering into brighter, more pop-oriented territory on several tracks. Line-up notes: Wish was the first studio album to feature Perry Bamonte as a full member and the last studio record to feature drummer Boris Williams (and, for a long while, guitarist Porl Thompson). The period immediately after Wish saw lineup shifts and eventually a slowdown in the band’s mainstream visibility.