Happy 25th: The Cure, Mixed Up

25 years ago today, The Cure released an album which may have made some of their mopier fans worry that they might have to stop being a wallflower and actually hit the dance floor for a change.

(They didn't, of course. They just continued to stand on the sidelines, vaguely swaying.)

The idea of artists doing dance remixes of their songs was certainly nothing new in 1990, but Mixed Up was one of the first times - possibly the very first, but we're extremely busy and don't have time to do the research - that an upper-tier alternative band had released an album's worth of them and treated it as a proper release. In fact, the whole affair felt a bit like a greatest-hits collection from an alternate universe, right down to the inclusion of the obligatory new track. The track in question, in case you've forgotten, was a little ditty called “Never Enough,” and although it's occasionally lost in the shuffle when discussing the best of The Cure, it actually topped Billboard's Modern Rock chart for three weeks.

The Cure - Never Enough from Carcass on Vimeo.

Although some of the band's fans groused about the album and the way it took creative license with songs which were just fine as they were, thank you very much, The Cure were clearly having a bit of fun with the whole affair, as evidenced by the names they doled out for the mixes, including the Flicker Mix for “The Caterpillar,” the Shiver Mix for “In Between Days,” the Tree Mix for “A Forest,” and for “Close to Me,” the Closer Mix.

AllMusic rightfully described Mixed Up as being “too specialized for casual fans,” but for Cure aficionados who are open-minded enough to accept a bit of change here and there, the album features a number of interesting reinventions that are well worth hearing.