Disintegration

Smith was approaching thirty and felt that rock masterpieces were made before that age. The band compared demos at Boris Williams's house, 32 songs on a 16-track, and twelve made the album. Smith went into what he called a non-talking mode, wanted an unpleasant working environment and aimed to recreate the atmosphere of Pornography. Elektra asked him to delay the release and called the record wilfully obscure. Tolhurst, credited with an other instrument, was dismissed after the mixing and the news came in February 1989. The original vinyl omitted Last Dance and Homesick.

The album reached number three in Britain and twelve in the United States and passed three million sales by 1992. Its singles were Lullaby (number five in Britain), Lovesong, and Pictures of You (number 24 in March 1990), while Fascination Street led in the United States and topped the Modern Rock chart. Rolling Stone's Michael Azerrad gave it three and a half stars and described a mood of thoroughly self-absorbed gloom, AllMusic's Erlewine gave it four and a half, and Pitchfork called it Smith's magnum opus. Rolling Stone ranked it 326th on its 500 Greatest Albums list in 2003 and 116th in 2020. The Prayer Tour followed, with about 50,000 at Dodger Stadium. A live album, Entreat, was recorded at Wembley in 1991, and a deluxe reissue with demos appeared in 2010.

The album was recorded at Hook End Manor in Checkendon, Oxfordshire, and at Outside Studios in Berkshire, and mixed at RAK Studio Three in London; the original UK sleeve carries the line that the music was mixed to be played loud. Smith wrote the words and the music is credited to all six members, Smith, Gallup, Thompson, Williams, O'Donnell and Tolhurst. Lullaby, the lead single in Britain, came out on 10 April 1989, is the band's only UK single to reach the top five and won British Video of the Year at the 1990 Brit Awards for Tim Pope's video. In North America Fascination Street came first and spent seven weeks at number one on the new Modern Rock chart.

Reviewing the deluxe reissue for Pitchfork in 2010, Nitsuh Abebe described a single, grand, dense and continual trip, opening with wind chimes and the huge synthesiser of Plainsong. He called it an album for capital-R Romantics rather than sulkers, and noted that Lovesong was written as a wedding present for Smith's wife. The Guardian's Petridis ranked Pictures of You fifth and Lovesong tenth among the band's best songs in 2024.