The Cure have scored their first UK No 1 album in 32 years, with Songs of a Lost World.
The band’s frontman Robert Smith said: “It is enormously uplifting, genuinely heartwarming to experience such a wonderful reaction to the release of the new Cure album. To everyone who has bought it, listened to it, loved it, believed in us over the years – thank you!”
The Cure previously topped the chart in 1992 with Wish, the only other one of their 14 studio albums to reach the top spot. That album also contained two of their biggest hit singles, with Friday I’m in Love and High both reaching the Top 10.
Their release rate began to slow somewhat after that, with an album every four years until 2008’s 4:13 Dream. The Cure continued to tour but some fans began to wonder whether a new studio album would ever appear. A companion record to 4:13 Dream was announced and later scrapped, and while Smith committed to returning to the studio in 2018, no music was heard for six years, until the September release of the Songs of a Lost World single Alone.
The excitement around the band’s return has sent their 2001 greatest hits compilation back up the charts, reaching No 30 this week.
Songs of a Lost World outsold the rest of the top five combined, and was the biggest seller on vinyl and in independent record shops this week.
In the singles chart, US singer Gracie Abrams – daughter of Hollywood director and producer JJ Abrams – scores her first UK No 1 single, with That’s So True. Her song I Love You, I’m Sorry is still performing strongly at No 4. Abrams, who supported Taylor Swift on the Eras tour with the pair also duetting on Abrams’ song Us, topped the UK album chart in July with her record The Secret of Us.