The Cure's Pornography: Song Review

    Pornography is the last track in The Cure's Pornography album. The album itself was released May 1982. It featured electronic sounds and a claustrophobic mood throughout. It's the fourth album of the group and the most potent song in their body of work.

Pornography,n. obscene pictures, writings, drawings, motion pictures,
 videos, or the like intended primarily to cause sexual
 arousal and having little or no artistic merit.
From the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

A hand in my mouth
A life spills into the flowers
We all look so perfect
As we all fall down

"What the world around us thought of as pornographic, we didn't. People's bodies aren't pornographic. What was pornographic, to us, was the way that people treated each other and how political systems destroyed people and that kind of intolerance. That's what we were trying to get across."  - Lol Tolhurst, drummer

In an electric glare
The old man cracks with age
She found his last picture
In the ashes of the fire
An image of the queen
Echoes round the sweating bed
Sour yellow sounds inside my head
In books
And films
And in life
And in heaven
The sound of slaughter
As your body turns

But it's too late
But it's too late

One more day like today and I'll kill you
A desire for flesh
And real blood
I'll watch you drown in the shower
Pushing my life through your open eyes

Perhaps the band wants to leave a note of hope here.

I must fight this sickness
Find a cure
I must fight this sickness

In a world where they are killing drug users, this song throws its accusation of hypocrisy at those who satisfy their bloodlust at the expense of people who have real problems.