Did Robert Smith steal ‘Friday I’m in Love’?
Just before The Cure entered the mid-1990s Britpop climate and experienced their first signs of waning influence (Britpop’s massively overrated anyway), Wish‘s second single ‘Friday I’m In Love’ scored their last classic song, reaching number six on the UK Singles Chart and also featuring one of their finest B-sides with ‘Halo’.
Wish still channels some of 1989’s Disintegration‘s introspective progressions but wafts away its gloomy production in favour of a more colourful and brighter record that veers between dramatic alternative rock with moments of sunny, unabashed pop. It also feels like the last of an era. Bassist Simon Gallup still has his massive hair, Tim Pope’s two videos for the record feel straight from their 1980s heydey, and it’s the last album to feature longtime drummer Boris Williams.
For Wish‘s biggest hit, singer and band constant Robert Smith was worried that he’d subconsciously nicked the melody from elsewhere, revealing to NME in 2008: “I mean, ‘Friday I’m In Love’ is not a work of genius, it was almost a calculated song. It’s a really good chord progression, I couldn’t believe no-one else had used it and I asked so many people at the time – I was getting drug paranoia anyway – “I must have stolen this from somewhere, I can’t possibly have come up with this.” I asked everyone I knew, everyone.”
Smith further revealed his anxiety over the song’s potential theft: “I’d phone people up and sing it and go, “Have you heard this before? What’s it called?” They’d go, “No, no, I’ve never heard it.” On the same album there were songs which I’d slaved over and I thought at the time were infinitely better, but ‘Friday…’ is probably the song off the ‘Wish’ album that’s the song.”
‘Friday I’m In Love’ is certainly a canonical song of theirs and one of the best singles of the 1990s. A burst of passion so joyous it shoots like a pop bottle rocket with effervescent cheer, perfectly capturing the subject of loving and embracing a partner’s maddening eccentricities and foibles.
Speaking to Mojo in 2004 about the single’s shining contrary to the stubborn ‘goth’ label: “It’s always been paradoxical that it’s pushed down people’s throats that we’re a goth band… Because, to the general public, we’re not. To taxi drivers, I’m the bloke that sings ‘Friday I’m in Love’. I’m not the bloke who sings ‘Shake Dog Shake’ or ‘One Hundred Years’.”
Sudden doubts of plagiarism that can follow the lightning bolt of a good tune also struck The Beatles’ Paul McCartney when awakening from a dream with ‘Yesterday‘s melody in his head, immediately rushing to the piano to avoid forgetting it.
Years later McCartney would recall a similar worry for song thievery: “For about a month I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before. Eventually, it became like handing something into the police. I thought if no one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it.”
