On this witty take on Rock's traditional love of the weekend, Robert Smith expresses his desire for his lover on their weekly Friday night out but dismisses her over the rest of the week. He said of the song in Spin magazine: "'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."
The opening line, "I don't care if Monday's blue," is a reference to the New Order hit "
Blue Monday."
This song peaked at #6, making it The Cure's second biggest hit in the UK to date, ("
Lullaby" peaked at #5). In the US, it reached #18.
The song's music video, directed by Tim Pope, won MTV's Best Music Video award in 1992.
This was used as the main theme song for the 2009 movie He's Just Not That into You.
It was also used in these movies:
Fortunata (2017)
About Time (2013)
50 First Dates (2004)
And these TV shows:
Ghosts ("The Grey Lady" - 2020)
iZombie ("Love & Basketball" - 2015)
Glee ("Child Star" - 2015)
My Mad Fat Diary ("Friday" - 2014, "Touched" - 2013)
Chuck ("Chuck Versus The Ring" - 2009)
Melrose Place ("Lonely Hearts" - 1992)
Robert Smith declared that this poppy ode to seeing your girl on Fridays was for people who "aren't actually fans of The Cure."
Australian singer Natalie Imbruglia sang this on her 2014 album Male, which featured her takes on songs from male artists. "I was nervous about doing this one because Cure fans are quite die-hard," she explained to Entertainment Weekly. "But you may as well do something radical. The Cure have that way of making their music feel light and fluffy and then you're like, 'Ugh, this is actually really heart-wrenching!' It's now the most fun song for me to perform."
This was originally recorded in the key of D but Smith accidentally sped it up by a quarter tone, which gave the tune a brighter sound. "I was playing with the vari-speed [pitch control] and forgot to turn it off," he told Guitar Player in 1992. "The whole feel changed, and the fact that it's the only song on Wish that's not in concert pitch really lifts it out and makes it sound different. After working on the record for months, hearing something a quarter tone off makes your brain take a step backwards."
The band recorded Wish at The Manor Studio in Shipton-on-Cherwell, a village north of Oxford. Virgin Records founder Richard Branson purchased the estate in '70s as a recording studio for the label but also welcomed outside artists. Famous acts like Queen, Van Morrison, John Cale, XTC, and Gene Simmons laid down tracks at The Manor in its first decade…a rather dubious roster in the eyes of Robert Smith. "This place symbolized for me everything wrong with music in the mid-'70s," he told Spin in 1992 as the band finished recording the album. "It's like, 'Oh no, you're going to the Manor and you're gonna get hexed and end up there for like a year's time.' But when you get here, you realize that it was the mentality of the people who recorded here that gave it that reputation. We visited around 12 or 13 residential studios around the country. This wasn't the best studio but it had the best atmosphere. That shows our intentions from the start."
Robert Smith liked the chord progression so much that he was certain he'd unintentionally stolen it from someone else's song. "I mean, 'Friday I'm In Love' is not a work of genius, it was almost a calculated song," he told NME in 2008. "It's a really good chord progression, I couldn't believe no one else had used it and I asked so many people at the time. I was getting drug paranoia anyway: 'I must have stolen this from somewhere, I can't possibly have come up with this.'"
He added: "I asked everyone I knew – everyone. I'd phone people up and sing it and go, 'Have you heard this before? What's it called?' They'd go, 'No, no, I've never heard it.' On the same album there were songs which I'd slaved over and I thought at the time were infinitely better, but 'Friday' is probably the song off the Wish album that's the song."
In the music video, Tim Pope captures the band goofing off and playing with theater props against ever-changing backdrops. Their manager Chris Parry, producer Dave Allen, engineer Steve Whitfield, and make-up artist Michi join in on the fun. Pope even makes a cameo appearance at the beginning of the clip, riding a rocking horse and shouting directions from a megaphone. Some of the imagery pays tribute to silent cinema, including the 1907 short film The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon by French filmmaker Georges Méliès.
