The Cure song Robert Smith said was “so out of character”
The public perception of The Cure has often seemed predicated upon Robert Smith’s unruly locks and penchant for black eyeliner. As such, they have been revered and remembered as one of the most important bands in the gothic subculture. While their sound did sometimes veer into that realm, via Smith’s darkly poetic lyrics and swirling gloomy soundscapes, they were just as fond of jangly pop melodies.
Nowhere is this clearer than on their 1992 hit ‘Friday I’m in Love’. From its opening moments, the song seems like the antithesis of gothic gloom. Jangly guitars form catchy melodies as Smith cycles through the days of the week, declaring himself in love on Fridays. It’s The Cure at their most jubilant and pop-adjacent, something the frontman even admitted felt out of character.
Smith once shrugged the track off as a “dumb pop song” during a conversation with Spin but maintained that 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 may have seemed and felt out of character, but The Cure had always shown glimpses of those more optimistic stylings, of pop melodies hidden under the guise of goth. Smith was particularly keen on walking the line between the two, dipping their toes into darker realms but never committing to them entirely, maintaining the ability to smash out pop hits too.
“It’s nice to get that counterbalance,” the frontman declared, “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.”
That’s not to say that The Cure’s catalogue is devoid of sonic gloom, far from it. The anxious and atmospheric ‘A Forest’ plunges the band’s sound into swirling gothic rock, while ‘One Hundred Years’, the opening track to Pornography, sets a precedent for the album’s melancholic focus.
But some of The Cure’s biggest hits, though still shrouded in their gothic appearance, were really just founded on pop melodies. ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ is impossibly catchy, and ‘Close To Me’ runs on hand claps and horns. Their range is ridiculously impressive because they refused to be contained into any one genre or subculture.
‘Friday I’m In Love’ might have seemed out of character, even to Smith, but it’s almost impossible to say that anything is out of character for The Cure. They were unpredictable and unafraid to follow their musical impulses.
Revisit ‘Friday I’m in Love’, The Cure classic Robert Smith said was “so out of character”, below.
