We’re celebrating the wonderful gift that is Fridays with a look back to The Cure’s most enduring pop song, Friday I’m In Love.
The track comes from the band’s uncharacteristically sugary 1992 LP, Wish, described by lead singer Robert Smith as a throw your hands in the air, let’s get happy kind of record.” Any dedicated fans of the Cure would understand the juxtaposition of this statement when compared to the band’s melancholy image, but it is perhaps this concurrence that makes the Cure’s pop tones so authentic. If the world’s favourite goth can find something to smile about, then surely there’s hope for us all.
Smith spoke candidly about his own contradictory thoughts on the song in an interview with SPIN magazine, saying: “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.”
“Genuinely dumb pop lyrics are much more difficult to write than my usual outpourings through the heart.”
Watch The Cure deliver a joyous live performance of their "dumb pop song" to a sea of cheering fans below.
The Cure | Friday I'm In Love
Smith reflected on the origins of the hit song when speaking with Guitar World, saying: “I remember driving home one Friday afternoon to have the weekend off. And I started to think of this really great chord sequence. I was about 20 minutes away from the studio. So I turned around, went back to the studio and everyone was still there.”
“We actually recorded it that Friday night. So from then on it was always just called ‘Friday’. Then, when I came to do the words for it, I thought, why don’t I do a song about that Friday feeling? It’s a thing you have at school, and lots of people work at jobs they don’t really enjoy. So that Friday afternoon feeling is something you look forward to.”
READ MORE: Revisit Faith by The Cure 40 Years On
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