Happy Anniversary: The Cure, “Standing on a Beach: The Singles”

29 years ago today, The Cure released a compilation of singles which would serve as a primer for a generation of Goth kids, alt-rockers, and college rock devotees, even if the song which provided it with its title has since been dropkicked into oblivion due to political correctness concerns.

Released on May 6, 1986, Standing on a Beach: The Singles was a unique entity from the get-go, offering a slightly different track listing between its vinyl and CD editions and a ton of additional tracks on its cassette version. In case you're wondering just what those differences were, the LP featured 13 tracks, the CD features those tracks while also adding four additional songs, while the cassette put all 13 songs from the LP on Side A and put a dozen B-sides on - appropriately enough - Side B. But if you want to know the actual songs that are each, well, here you go:

LP & CD, with differences in track listing noted:
Killing an Arab
10:15 Saturday Night (only on CD)
Boys Don't Cry
Jumping Someone Else's Train
A Forest
Play for Today (only on CD)
Primary
Other Voices (only on CD)
Charlotte Sometimes
The Hanging Garden
Let's Go to Bed
The Walk
The Lovecats
The Caterpillar
In Between Days
Close To Me
A Night Like This (only on CD)

Side B of Cassette:
I'm Cold (B-side of “Jumping Someone Else's Train”
Another Journey by Train (B-side of “A Forest”)
Descent (B-side of “Primary”)
Splintered in Her Head (B-side of “Charlotte Sometimes”)
Mr. Pink Eyes (B-side of “The Love Cats”)
Happy the Man (B-side of “The Caterpillar”)
Throw Your Foot (B-side of “The Caterpillar”)
The Exploding Boy (B-side of “In Between Days”)
A Few Hours After This (B-side of “In Between Days”)
A Man Inside My Mouth (B-side of “Close to Me”)
Stop Dead (B-side of “In Between Days” and “Close to Me”)
New Day (“B-side of “Close to Me”)

We've put together a playlist which features all of the above songs but one, and since we referenced it above, you probably already know which one it is: “Killing an Arab.” Yes, sadly, the song inspired by Albert Camus' “The Stranger” - Robert Smith once described it as “a short poetic attempt at condensing my impression of the (novel's) key moments” - is not available on Spotify, and even on the rare occasions when The Cure has revived the song for live performances, they've done so by changing the title to “Kissing an Arab,” which is most decidedly not in keeping with Camus' text. Thankfully, everything else from Standing on a Beach is here, as are the B-sides, so there's still plenty of good music to go around.