Perhaps there is no candidate for Pop Superstar more unlikely than The Cure’s Robert Smith. With his frizzy moptop, pale complexion, and full face of makeup, Smith was the face of the 1980s goth rock movement and its obsession with darkness—the kind of guy that Satanic Panic folks would point to to prove that society was in the icy grip of the Dark Lord.

While their output was nowhere near as evil as Christian Fundamentalists would have you believe, The Cure’s music did have a gothic darkness that would make religious parents plead for their childrens’ souls when they heard it through the bedroom door.

And yet, their seventh full-length, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, somehow broke the Billboard Top 40,  despite its extended instrumental passages, flirtations with Eastern folk music, and a massive runtime. Even for all its weirdness though, it managed to fit in some absolutely stunning pop hits.

With the release of 1985’s eclectic The Head on the Door, The Cure found quantifiable success for the first time in their career, even landing in the Billboard Top 100, finally gathering some attention in the United States market. Capitalizing on such a success is always a daunting task, but if Smith & Co. were intimidated by the prospect, you wouldn’t know it by the monolith that is Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.

They returned to the eccentric pop of The Head on the Door and expanded it, nearly doubling the run time. Their musical explorations reach out in all directions, uniting elements of post-punk, new wave, synthpop, world music, and even funk and ska, indulging the kaleidoscopic eclecticness of its predecessor into something more appropriate for the arenas they had found themselves playing.

There are numerous dark jams that find the guitars, synths, and saxophones riffing for several bars at a time, like the brooding “All I Want,” the menacing “Snakepit,” and the Raga-tinged “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep.” On the other end you have bouncing pop tracks like the bouncy “The Perfect Girl,” the catchy horn-aided lament “Why Can’t I Be You?” and the indelible love song “Just Like Heaven,” the latter of which are both fitting additions to the pop canon no matter how much hairspray and eyeliner the creators wore. In between, you have tender ballads like the high school slow-dance worthy “One More Time” and Beatles-esque “Catch.”

But for all of its variety, Kiss Me is incredibly cohesive, united by the sheen of keyboard pads, reverberated guitars, moody bass lines, and Robert Smith’s unmistakable voice, which shifts between mournful warbles, tormented yelps, and the occasional delighted squeal (which is played for parody on the faux-funk “Hot! Hot Hot!“).

True, some of the sounds are a bit dated. The drums are often coated with gated reverb and some of the keyboard sounds haven’t been put to tape since the first Bush administration. But even at thirty-four years old (as of yesterday), Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me still sounds like an absolute classic. It’s certainly not an easy album to listen to (largely due to its immense run time), but rewards both close and casual listening, appropriate for both headphones and the dancefloor. Its follow up, the dour Disintegration, may be the more important artistic statement, but Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me is more engaging, more immediately gratifying, and more apt for repeated listens. Disintegration is probably better, but it was this album that has a more obvious influence on bands like Bloc Party, Nine Inch Nails, and Smashing Pumpkins,.And as someone who has all too recently realized the true importance of The Cure in the scope of pop music history, I have a lot of listens to make up for.