Happy 45th Anniversary to The Cure’s first compilation album Boys Don’t Cry, originally released February 5, 1980.
Debut albums are often iconic, unleashing the full force of a long-simmering statement, so it’s strange that The Cure, a band heralded for their unwavering artistic vision, ended up with multiple ways to greet the world.
First came their official studio debut, Three Imaginary Boys, in May 1979. Released by Fiction Records and distributed across Western Europe, the album introduced The Cure to music fans in the UK, France, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands.
Although punctuated by punky earworms like “10:15 Saturday Night,” “Fire in Cairo,” and “Grinding Halt,” it’s a bit of an aberrant record, in that Chris Parry, who signed the band to Fiction, orchestrated the final 13-song track listing, not The Cure’s front man, Robert Smith.
While the album charted amidst the UK’s top 50 and garnered praise from leading British publications, Fiction sought broader appeal and reconstructed Three Imaginary Boys for The Cure’s American and Australian debut.
The resulting Boys Don’t Cry emerged nearly nine months later, integrating eight tracks from Three Imaginary Boys, but notably adding singles, “Killing an Arab,” “Jumping Someone Else’s Train,” and “Boys Don’t Cry,” along with “Plastic Passion,” the latter’s B-side.
Parry produced both of The Cure’s debut albums, and while Boys Don’t Cry, with its inclusion of the three singles, is deliberately designed to be more accessible, its sequencing also feels more considered, showcasing greater variety in tempo and tone while pairing lyrically connected songs like “Fire in Cairo” and “Another Day.”
Despite Fiction’s best efforts, mainstream America’s reaction to The Cure’s more commercial offering was tepid at best. But looking back, it didn’t matter.
Boys Don’t Cry, much like its European counterpart, accomplished something far more compelling: It invoked a sense of wonder and comfort, burrowing its curious charms in the minds of those finding favor in the fringes. A fervent fanbase was beginning to take hold.
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Indeed, The Cure were never one for complacency—or “jumping someone else’s train,” as Smith cleverly coined. They carved their own path from the start.
Railing against their dreary doldrum of a town and the meager possibilities it presented, The Cure’s founding members—Robert Smith, Lol Tolhurst, and Michael Dempsey—joined in cathartic camaraderie, coalescing around a common desire to challenge societal expectations.
In The Cure: Ten Imaginary Years, an account of the band’s beginnings, Tolhurst recalls, “St Wilfrid’s was a strict school….I think that’s where the idea of doing something together came from, as a challenge to all that discipline. My friendship with Robert developed—I began to rebel too.”
The friendships among the teenage trio deepened, with routine rehearsals in an annex outside Smith’s parents’ house.
From bongo-banging folk appearances to ragtag schoolhouse gigs, the band tested myriad monikers and personnel permutations, oft covering longtime heroes like David Bowie, Alex Harvey, and Jimi Hendrix while weaving in their own embryonic concoctions.
“The group was a way of doing something. I didn’t hope for anything, but I found a lot of our songs better than those I was listening to. My biggest influence at that time was John Peel. From 15 on, I used to listen to his show every night, that was the best part of the day….I used to dream of making a record that John Peel would play,” reflects Smith.
As a decades-long devotee, my biased brain would vehemently argue that Smith was right—that The Cure’s unique lyrical and musical talents were evident as far back as Three Imaginary Boys. But I would also concede that the revised debut of Boys Don’t Cry was a wise move, underscoring not just the artful phrasings that seem to so easily spill from Smith’s singular psyche, but also the band’s penchant for crafting songs with legitimate staying power.
In fact, it didn’t take long for Smith’s dream to come true. A fortnight before the release of the band’s first single, “Killing an Arab,” in December 1978, The Cure were broadcast on the John Peel Show, alongside the Buzzcocks, Bob Dylan, and Joe Jackson. And they would go on to clock regular play straight through until 1991.
Perhaps unsurprising to anyone even remotely familiar with the band’s 230-plus-song oeuvre, Peel selected “Boys Don’t Cry” as the first Cure track he unveiled to listeners. An instant club hit, the compact pop song wraps a brave face around heartbreaking resignation as Smith poignantly recounts the blunders that led to the relationship’s end. Making matters worse is society’s standard adverse response to any show of painful emotion, particularly for men who are too often taught that tears are a sign of weakness (“So I try to laugh about it / Cover it all up with lies / I try to / laugh about it / Hiding the tears in my eyes / ‘cause boys don’t cry”).
Whether you weep, dance, or quite possibly end up doing both, it’s hard not to feel something when you listen to “Boys Don’t Cry.” It seems to have been laced with nostalgia from the get-go, and is so perfectly, delightfully, and quintessentially Cure.
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While “Boys Don’t Cry,” the band’s second single, represents the more buoyant side of their catalogue, their first-ever release, “Killing an Arab,” reveals yet another motif in the Cure realm: the search for meaning—often coupled with the distinct realization that none exists.
Inspired by Albert Camus’ novel The Stranger, Smith slips into protagonist Meursault’s inner dialogue, contemplating the existential absurdity of it all, as he stands on a beach on the cusp of killing (“I can turn / And walk away / Or I can fire the gun / Staring at the sky / Staring at the sun / Whichever I chose/ It amounts to the same / Absolutely nothing”).
Intense, thought-provoking, and grim, the song pulls you into a pivotal murderous moment. And yet, it amazingly succeeds as an unforgettably vivid single, somehow painting a magnificent picture while inviting you to flail and bop.
The Cure were never about doing the expected.
And yes, it’s admittedly weird that they have two debut albums, but no matter the entrance, it’s clear they were charting their own course.