I haven’t done a Cure post in a while, nor an Iterations, so let’s do both! “Boys Don’t Cry” was released as a single in 1979 but, as was the custom at the time, did not appear on the band’s debut album Three Imaginary Boys on its initial release. For the band’s introduction to the US market, their label opted to add those non-album singles, come up with new artwork and rename the record after the most successful of those songs – thus Boys Don’t Cry the album, released in 1980, exists. Three Imaginary Boys proper didn’t get a US release until 2004!
As one of their oldest and most-streamed songs by a wide margin, the band have been talking about “Boys Don’t Cry” for decades now. In conversation with Rolling Stone circa their 40th anniversary concerts at Hyde Park in London in 2019, Robert Smith discussed how the song’s meaning and resonance has changed over the years:
You’ve never shied away from showing your sensitivity in your songs, going back to “Boys Don’t Cry.” How did you find that side of yourself?
I was singing that at Glastonbury a couple of days ago and I realized that it has a very contemporary resonance with all the rainbow stripes and stuff flying in the crowd. I thought, it’s showing the other side of the coin to the #MeToo thing. In no way is it similar, but when I was growing up, there was peer pressure on you to conform to be a certain way. And 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. 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,” as with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing, so I did it even more.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 it was just an expression.
The Cure’s Robert Smith Looks Back: ‘I’ve Never Thought About Legacy’ @ Rolling Stone
That Rolling Stone interview is referenced in this recent MusicRadar feature on the making of the song, including some more technical and theoretical aspects of the song’s composition and recording:
Original drummer Lol Tolhurst left the band in 1989 but has discussed his time in The Cure and the writing of the song a few times. He was a guest on the Story Behind The Song podcast in 2023 and was a guest on BBC Radio 4’s Soul Music show about it in 2018.
Lol Tolhurst on The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry” @ BBC Radio 4: Soul Music
Despite being one of their earliest singles – or because of it – there was no official video for the songs on its release… mostly because there’d have been nowhere to show it! That was remedied in 1986 when director Tim Pope made a clip depicting three children miming playing the song while the silhouettes of the original members performed behind them.
Naturally, because of the song’s importance, it’s probably been played at almost every Cure concert ever (logged 1075 times as of today at setlist.fm) so there’s a wealth of live renditions to watch. This one was recorded at Tokyo’s Nakano Sun Plaza in 1984 and released as part of the The Top Tour 1984 – Live In Japan that was released on videocassette the following year.
The band were invited to do an MTV Unplugged in London in January 1991. That performance has never been officially released, though it is widely bootlegged and has been hanging out online for many years.
Their 1992 tour was documented for their Show live release, featuring a two-night stand at The Palace of Auburn Hills in Michigan. I’ve linked a bookmark of the whole show that has superior audio and video to the standalone clips online.
When the band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2019, they played a five-song set as the induction ceremony in Brooklyn in March of that year. Naturally, “Boys Don’t Cry” was the set-closer.
The same for their November 2024 show at The Troxy in London to mark the release of Songs Of A Lost World. Perhaps a bigger challenge would be finding out the last time they played a show that didn’t close with “Boys Don’t Cry”? You go ahead. I’m not that interested.
Normally this is where I’d get into the cover versions, but remarkably for a song this age and importance, I can’t find a single decent or interesting cover version to share. There’s versions by Miley Cyrus and Scarlett Johansson that exist, if that’s your jam, but they’re not mine. Instead, here’s a few guitar cover/lesson videos if you want to learn to play this, honestly, exceedingly simple song, and record your own! If it’s good I’ll post it. Really. No, not really.
