People are always fascinated by this one album.
The band never made another one like it.
Whatever you choose to think of it, you've got to admit it's an important eighties album.
By saying that, I suppose I'm acknowledging the way it reflected a part of the early eighties.
Although the band's spirits were at an all time low at the time of the recording, "Pornography" is now considered the high creative point of the band's career.

Pornography is the depressive album against which all other albums must be measured.
It has to be a good day for me to even be able to listen to it, even then it could put me into a down mood.

Is that just me ? Is it because I lived through the eighties and so the music and the state of mind means something to me ?

In France, where I live, The Cure got to be the number one band, but only a few years after this album. Probably around 1984 or 1985. Lots of people walking around as Robert Smith clones. That was the epitome of cool in those days.
It's funny to think about it. That a band able to bring out something as bleak as this, as uncommercial and difficult to listen to was able to top the charts (ok, so they didn't top the charts with any of the tracks from this album, but still...).

It's funny to think back on the effect such bands had on us kids back then. It was part of this whole new wave scene. The "no future" message of the punks taken even further. A depressed lifestyle where the inability to communicate was a quality.
Or was it part of that old favourite, the tormented romantic, always a popular one with adolescents ?
Shyness and clumsy movements, a face made up as white as death but with bright red lipstick, thick, messy, black hair, black clothes too large for him as if to accentuate the clumsiness, the refusal of sexuality...
Yes, this was our hero. I'd probably have been better off sticking to AC/DC !
I mean, we all thought that characters like Robert Smith were so much more sincere, so much more real than bands that dared to be happy. We thought they put themselves on the line, they struggled to produce great art, that an honest work of art, therefore a true work of art, was one that could only be obtained by great suffering.

Yeah, but to produce an album that couldn't be listened to without suffering, an actually managing to market it. Well that was something.