The Cure play new song ‘Another Happy Birthday’ live for the first time
During their North American tour stop at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night, The Cure showcased a new track, ‘Another Happy Birthday’. The emphatic show was the first of a three-night run at the historic venue and saw Robert Smith in great form.
“And your birthday is the worst day/I’m singing to a ghost/ Happy birthday/ I forget how it goes,” Smith sings in the new song. Even by The Cure’s standards, ‘Another Happy Birthday’ is a notably melancholy track that harkens back to The Smiths’ ‘Unhappy Birthday’, but with a fraction of the irony.
Although ‘Another Happy Birthday’ has now debuted on the stage, it has its roots in the 1990s. In 1997, Smith mentioned the song when discussing a B-sides and rarities collection he was toying with. “It’s unlike anything The Cure have done before. It’s not a verse-chorus-verse type of song, but more fluid,” he told MTV at the time.
It remains unclear whether the version that debuted on Tuesday is the same song or a new one that happens to share the same name. Whether or not the track will appear on the forthcoming album, Songs of a Lost World, is also unknown at this point.
Elsewhere on The Cure’s extensive ongoing tour, Smith, Simon Gallup, and the band have debuted other previously unheard material, including ‘Alone’, ‘And Nothing Is Forever’, ‘A Fragile Thing’, and ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye’.
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