June 13, 1992
- STAYED AT #1:4 Weeks
In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.
"Friday I'm In Love" didn't make any sense to me. It didn't compute. I was 12 years old when "Friday I'm In Love" came out, and I thought I knew who the Cure were. They were the miserable guys, the ones who dressed like bats and wore mime makeup. But "Friday I'm In Love" is the first Cure song that I remember actively hearing, and it didn't square with that image at all. Why were these depressed wraiths singing this boppy bubblegum song about their favorite day of the week? The cognitive dissonance was too much. I decided that the song was stupid, the Cure were stupid, and I should invest all my emotional energy in bands that had stagedives in their videos.
People contain multitudes. I didn't get that yet. I didn't know that the Cure had plenty of fun, silly pop songs in their discography and that I'd come to love a lot of those songs. Later on, when I figured out that the Cure were not stupid, I learned that plenty of the band's devotees agreed with 12-year-old me about "Friday I'm In Love." Sometimes, Robert Smith agreed with me, too. It's a pretty common take: The Cure are great, but "Friday I'm In Love" is a goofy little pop song that's just for normies. There are plenty of Cure fans who actively resent "Friday I'm In Love," and there are presumably plenty of people who adore the song and who don't otherwise give a single fuck about the Cure.