Two live albums is a lot of moping, but Robert Smith seems to relish every moment of Show and Paris. For 15 years a totem for trembling teens with high IQs and low self-esteem, Smith is the Cure-ator of a band that has built a museum of pretty misery. Particularly with their keyboard fills, they frame their trance-inducing songs with sharp, angular hooks; at pop for depressives, they rule. There's little apparent difference between these two career overviews: Both feature early, somber stuff ("Play for Today"), midperiod catchiness ("Let's Go to Bed") and recent radio masterstrokes ("Friday I'm in Love"). And in bulk, there's considerable fascination to this work: the faux-Middle Eastern exoticism of their swirling melodies; Smith's acid-muezzin wailing; all the black-velvet Byronic pain. Spooky.

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.