“Suddenly we were off”: the 1983 song Robert Smith considered The Cure’s first major hit
In the early days, The Cure frontman Robert Smith often had to compromise on elements of his artistic expression to appease the label or others in the studio. Sometimes, their opinions mattered, but other times, like with the case of what he considered to be their major first hit, Smith knew precisely what he was doing.
Before writing material for 1982’s Pornography, Smith was at somewhat of an impasse. In fact, part of him thought that he had already reached the end for the group, and was faced with a make-or-break decision following an extensive touring cycle and a deterioration of his mental health as a result.
The way he saw it, therefore, he could take one of two roads: either call it a day or push through the burnout and make another masterpiece that would end the band on a high note. Suffice to say, he chose the latter, but not without taking much of that fire to put an end to things and channelling it into some of his best material to date.
As he put it himself, on Pornography, he “channelled all the self-destructive elements of my personality into doing something” and chased excellence to make something of the chaos, even if it all felt a little “odd” and not at all like the kind of band he’d want to be remembered for.
After pushing himself to that point and exacerbating what turmoil was already there, Smith decided it was time for a break, retreating to the Lake District to clear his mind and calibrate for whatever venture he embarked on next. However, said venture ended up being another hit that challenged everything everybody thought they knew about The Cure.
‘Let’s Go to Bed’, the band’s next single following the release of the utter brilliance that was Pornography, was written after Smith’s temporary break from music, but was almost the complete opposite of the sort of material he’d written before, and what people generally expected him to do next. In fact, it was so far-out in sound and style that when Smith initially took it to the label, they looked at him like he’d grown two heads.
“It was like silence,” Smith told Rolling Stone, recalling how they looked at him and said, “You can’t be serious. Your fans are gonna hate it.” While he understood their reservations, he also felt determined to ditch the path he’d been on before; the excess, the poor mental well-being, all of it. He wanted to do something so “cheerful” that it’d shed his previous reputation like a second skin, almost in a self-sebotage way, but which ensured that he’d never be looked at the same again.
Needless to say, Smith agreed with the label in thinking it wouldn’t go anywhere. He almost welcomed it, so he was probably slightly irked when the opposite happened, and the song became one of their first-ever major hits. According to Smith, he went from having an audience of predominantly goths to women “with perfect teeth”, which was strange, but ultimately set him free from his earlier turmoil, leading to other hits like ‘The Lovecats’.
‘Let’s Go to Bed’ wasn’t a hit in every market, of course, and in fact only gained a significant amount of popularity in Australia and New Zealand. But Smith felt the shift as though it’d been a hit everywhere, especially with how it helped them to break free from categories he wasn’t even sure he still wanted to be a part of anymore.
“I can remember thinking, ‘We’re never going to have a hit,’” he concluded. “I thought I was going to have to get used to the fact that what we were doing was making underground music. Then we did ‘Let’s Go To Bed’, and suddenly we were off.”
