After recently hitting 1 billion streams on Spotify, their cult hit song is on track to enter the UK Top 20 for the first time ever, nearly 40 years after its release…
The Cure first released their most well known and popular song ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ in 1979. The song was released as a stand-alone single on the 12th of June the same year. The band was formed in Crawley, West Sussex, England in 1976. On vocals and guitar is the enigmatic Robert Smith and joining him on drums is Lol Tolhurst. The pair meet and had become friends at Notre Dame Middle School in 1973 and over the next few years began their incredible artist journey into the world of music. They formed many different bands with various member in the first few years before becoming influenced by the punk rock scene of 1977 and initially calling themselves Easy Cure. By the time of the release of their debut album the Easy Cure had evolved into The Cure and in May of 1979 the band released it’s debut album Three Imaginary Boys.
However, the initial experience in the studio recording the album for the band and in particular Smith was far from a positive one. Due to their youth and inexperience the sessions were taken over by Chris Parry. Parry was the scout at the label Polydor Records who had discovered the band and signed them to his newly formed Fiction label which would be distributed by Polydor Records in September 1978. Parry along with recording engineer Mike Hedges took control of the recording sessions stifling Smith’s artistic vision before he even had the chance to realise it. Smith was often at times feeling very rushed and at times literally composing lyrics as he was singing them. Smith reflected on this time in a Spin magazine interview in 1987 stating, “a lot of it was very superficial – I didn’t even like it at the time. There were criticisms made that it was very lightweight, and I thought they were justified. Even when we’d made it, I wanted to do something that I thought had more substance to it.”
The album Three Imaginary Boys drew its name from the fact that The Cure at this time was a three piece consisting of Smith on lead vocals and guitar, Tolhurst on drums and Micheal Dempsey on bass and backing vocals. The trio composed the song ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ during the recording sessions for Three Imaginary Boys. The song itself tells the story of a man who has given up trying to regain a love that he has lost albeit unrequited or not. The man or character in the song is desperately trying to disguise his emotional state. In 2026 it is very much encouraged for men to be more open and in touch with their emotions. However, in 1979 it was very much the antithesis. Men weren’t meant to show emotion but rather be suppress it showing stoicism is the face of adversity. In an interview for the NME magazine in 2019 Smith addresses this saying: “As an English boy at the time, you’re encouraged not to show your emotion to any degree. And I couldn’t help but show my emotions when I was younger. I never found it awkward showing my emotions. I couldn’t really continue without showing my emotions; you’d have to be a pretty boring singer to do that. So I kind of made a big thing about it. I thought, ‘Well, it’s part of my nature to rail against being told not to do something’.”
The song was released as a stand-alone single on the 12th of June 1979 in the UK with the B-side ‘Plastic Passion’. At this time The Cure’s popularity and success in the US was a slower burn. Therefore, to break the US market the band would become release their first compilation album titled Boys Don’t Cry in February 1980, with hopes that using the song for the title would increase the songs and bands reach. The album consisted of most of the material from Three Imaginary Boys which has never had an official release in the US as well as other material the band recorded between 1978-79. The single as well as the album barely made any impact on the music scene and didn’t chart at all in the US, neither did the original release in the UK. The lack of success was put down to the lack of support from Fiction’s parent label Polydor Records not promoting the band or the single. Parry and the band had been confident that the song would be their break out hit on the mainstream music charts. This was not to be but all was not lost as over time ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ become a cult hit with the underground new wave punk scene. Although there was criticism that the song sounded amazing live, the band had failed to translate that same sonic energy to the studio recording effectively. Therefore, over time the song was dropped from their set list altogether and sink into obscurity.
The Cure in the following years went through many line-up changes, allowing Smith to complete one of the most extraordinary album trilogy’s with the subsequent sophomore Seventeen Seconds 1980 and follow up album and Faith 1981. By this time The Cure had been re categorised from a Post Punk New Wave band to a Goth band. However, the band was not comfortable with their new public perception as Tolhurst reflects; “People have a strange impression of The Cure as po-faced Goths sitting in rooms, crying at each other with candles and bells, or something… and that’s not really us. We took what we did seriously, but we didn’t take ourselves that seriously. And I think that’s the key, because once you start to believe your own myth, you’re in danger.” Smith also added his perception in an interview, “I don’t think of the Cure as a goth band,” said Smith. “I never have. I grew up in a world where goth hadn’t quite been invented in the way that we know and love it. And I was part of this subculture in as much as I went to the Batcave with [Steve] Severin (bassist and composer for the band Siouxsie and the Banshees). The Banshees were pretty much a goth band for a while. But even they really weren’t. But real goth bands were around — the ones that were part of that initial movement. They were goth bands, and I wasn’t.” However, despite the public perceptions the turning point in the bands career would come in 1985 with the release of the bands sixth studio album The Head on the Door.
The Cure continues as a never ending revolving door when it comes to its members, which would also be the norm for the bands entire existence, so in 1985 with yet a new line up. During this time Smith’s song writing had finally found an acute balance between pessimism and optimism in his lyrics that helped attain the commercial success the band had craved in 1979. Coming of the back of the success of the singles ‘In Between Days’ and ‘Close To Me’, The Head on the Door reached number seven on the UK charts and a respectable 59 on the US charts. Following this success subsequent tour The Cure released what one could consider one of the greatest compilation albums ever to be released since The Beatles 1976-1970, and the album is simply called Standing On A Beach. Released in 1986 Standing On A Beach will become too many fans gateway album to the band and its incredible back catalogue. The release of Standing On A Beach includes a re-release of the single ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ in April 1986. The track has had the vocals re-recorded by Smith who believed that his voice had matured in the intervening seven years. “I re-sang it in 1986 because I thought I could do a bit more with the song. I felt I was improving as a singer, becoming more confident. So although I didn’t really deviate too much from the original vocal melody or phrasing, I knew I get a bit more tone and emotion into the rework.”, Smith recently stated in an interview.
By 1986 technology and media had advanced significantly since 1979 with the invention of MTV (Music Television). Therefore, the promotion of the single was also accompanied by a music video directed by Tim Pope. Pope had already collaborated with the band on previous music videos for the releases of ‘The Love Cats’ and ‘Close To Me’. During the filming of the video the photographer Andy Vella would take one of the most iconic pictures not only of the band but also in music history. The iconic picture shows Smith in silhouette, this iconic image would adorn thousands of posters and t shirts for decades to come.
On the 30th of January 2026 The Cure re-released the 7” version of the 86 Mix which has long been out of print along with a 12” mix and B-sides on all digital platforms. This will be followed up with a physical release in April 2026. This will also be the first time the single will be available in CD format. The track listing is as follows ‘Boys Don’t Cry – 86 Mix’, ‘Plastic Passion’, ‘Pillbox Tales’, ‘Do The Hansa’ and ‘Boys Don’t Cry – 12” Mix. Moreover, in a wonderful justification for one of the best pop songs to come out of the UK, The Cure have a genuine hit on their hands with the 40th Anniversary release. It has made it to 22 so far on the UK charts and also found success in New Zealand, Australia, Spain, France and the Netherlands.
“Boys Don’t Cry’ despite the initial reception has been considered a cult classic for quite some time. It is more often than not the set closer for their live concerts as seen in their incredible performance at the Glastonbury Festival in 2019. It has been covered by many different artists such as Grant-Lee Philips and Oleander. The title of the song was the inspiration for the 1999 movie Boys Don’t Cry, starring Hilary Swank for which she received an Oscar in the Best Actress category. It has also featured in many other film such as 50 First Dates, Friends with Benefits, Me and You and most memorably Adam Sandler’s performance of the song in The Wedding Singer. The simple message and challenging of our societal perception of male masculinity in the song is still as poignant and relevant as it has ever been. So, boys do cry and long may that continue to be the norm and not to be seen as weakness in men by either sex in any society anywhere, may sensitivity be the cure for men ever more.
