Hear Robert Smith’s isolated vocals for The Cure song ‘Friday, I’m In Love’
There are few songs that are as seemingly incompatible with their songwriting creator as ‘Friday, I’m In Love’ and The Cure. Born in the depths of Crawley and raised within the thriving punk scene, Robert Smith and his band The Cure are notably thought of as some of the best alternative record makers in British music history. Their initial adoption of a moody post-punk sound quickly moved into something singular, an arthouse band project that never really stopped creating over their five-decade career.
Most of the band’s output is tinged with melancholy and effortlessly provides a side of life that few elaborate on in the mainstream. However, for a brief period and perhaps as a showcase of Smith’s ability within the pop music field, hence licensing his disdain for it, The Cure spent some years cast out of their familiar avant-garde atriums into the charting winds of popular culture. During this period, they wrote one of their most famous songs of all, ‘Friday I’m In Love’.
Released in 1992, it captures the band moving out of their sardonic 1980s motifs and into a more mainstream audience. Bands like R.E.M. and Morrissey experienced a similar move at this time as, once more, Glastonbury Festival and baggy culture began to merge on what was defined as cool in the collective consciousness. While the song catapulted The Cure even further up the industry ladder, Smith wrote the track as an exercise.
Smith described the song in an interview with SPIN magazine: “‘Friday I’m In Love’ is a dumb pop song, but it’s quite excellent actually because it’s so absurd. It’s so out of character—very optimistic and really out there in happy land. It’s nice to get that counterbalance. People think we’re supposed to be leaders of some sort of ‘gloom movement.’ I could sit and write gloomy songs all day long, but I just don’t see the point.”
As it transpired, Smith originally wrote the song intending it to be played at a much slower tempo. The song was also originally recorded in Richard Branson’s Tudor mansion in the key of D major, but the version that was eventually released was left a quarter-tone higher in pitch because Smith allegedly forgot to disengage the vari-speed function on the multi-track recorder after toying around with the settings. This difference can be heard when the band play the track live in D major. It makes it all the sweeter to know that it would appear Smith and his band were very much aware of the jigsaw they were shaping pop song pieces for.
“‘Friday, I’m In Love’ is not a work of genius, it was almost a calculated song,” Smith recalled. “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.”
While the chord progression is certainly part of why the song found so much success, it is the set of lyrics Smith penned that will live on forever. A simple weekday structure is gilded with shimmering notions of excited romance, but the real glimmer comes from the wink of Smith, letting us know that it’s all a bunch of hooey. That irreverence can be felt when the vocals of Robert Smith are isolated. It is here that we can feel the true sentiment of this song.
Listen to Robert Smith’s isolated vocals for The Cure song ‘Friday I’m In Love’ below.
