The “crass” joke Robert Smith has always distanced himself from
For a band forever dogged with the ‘goth’ label, The Cure had torn through a dizzying amount of stylings by the time of their 1987 double LP. Either side of their early ’80s suite of post-punk albums is the dreamy melodies of their Three Imaginary Boys debut, through to the acid-fried psychedelia of The Top, The Head on the Door‘s kaleidoscopic pop and a smattering of monster stand-alone singles along the way.
Recording in the south of France’s Miraval studios and Compass Point in the Bahamas, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me is possessed with a bright sense of holiday escapism, filled with a wealth of material as a result of singer Robert Smith and the band simply working to avoid leaving their sunny retreat.
Clocking at nearly 75 minutes before prioritising the CD format coupled with several fantastic B-sides from the Kiss Me… sessions, The Cure was in the middle of a seriously creative purple patch.
Lead single ‘Why Can’t I Be You?’ was The Cure’s bounciest pop hit yet. A joyously flashy blast of dance funk and horn disco that’s just the right amount of absurd but irresistibly catchy, showcasing how essential Simon Gallup’s focused bass style is to their sound.
Seemingly another lyrical ode to head-over-heels passion in the vein of ‘Friday I’m in Love’ or ‘The Lovecats’, Smith revealed to Les Inrockuptibles in 1987 that the single’s theme wasn’t literal: “I was in the middle of a tense discussion and these people around the table were looking at me as if I was going to make some groundbreaking revelations, and I thought to myself, ‘Good God, why can’t I be elsewhere? Why isn’t someone else in my place?’ I would’ve traded with anyone. I would’ve preferred to be that guy leaning at the bar than myself.”
‘Why Can’t I Be You?’s dancefloor cheer is matched with a gleefully silly video, Smith and the group raiding the dress-up box, fighting over each other as to who can mug the camera the hardest, and performing a stiff, barely rehearsed dance routine.
Captured by longtime Cure video director Tim Pope, Smith opted for both a bear and a schoolgirl, Gallup a Morris dancer, Guitarist Porl Thompson a cross-dressing Scotsman, drummer Boris Williams a vampire, and founding member plus keyboardist Lol Tolhurst a bumblebee and unfortunately introducing the video in blackface. Pope later expressed regret, telling The Quietus in 2019: “A very inappropriate choice… Not a thing I feel great about retrospectively.”
Further japery was indulged in throughout the shoot. When the members of the band are body-spelling ‘Y, I, B, U’, to symbolise the ‘Can’t’ part of the song’s title a large sideways pair of lips is used in a juvenile act of lewd wordplay which we’ll let you figure out. Keen to avoid the blame, Smith was happy to point fingers at the video’s director: “The obvious phonetic depiction of the word ‘Can’t’ was nothing to do with me – it’s the childish side of Tim Pope’s award-winning nature. It seems crass now. We thought it would be seen once, fleetingly, on telly.”
