Let's Go to Bed

Okay this is going to be kind of long, but I think an interesting piece of Cure history. Here are a few things that Smith has said about "Let's Go To Bed":

"‘Let's Go To Bed’ is not my favourite Cure song, by a long way, but I realize what it did for us. And I can think back and remember the feeling I had when it was getting radio play, and things were changing. It was an experiment, and it was working. And I remember really being kind of enthused by that. Thinking, "I can actually do something really different and it will work." And it gave me a lot of confidence. “At the time, '82, it came off the back of us doing "17 Seconds," "Faith" and "Pornography." And we were kind of on an ever-downward spiral, and I was in a pretty bad mental state. ["Let's Go to Bed"] was kind of a road-to-Damascus sort of experience for me. I thought I would do something I would completely hate and that I would be totally opposed to--at the time, I wanted to take a holiday from myself, really. That's why I did that song. “I found it easy. I thought, "I've got this mental block about lots of different things," and in that song and in the accompanying video, just laying myself open to ridicule was a great experience for me. It made me grow up. In a funny way, it was one of the most childish things we've ever done, and yet I thought it was the most grown-up thing we'd done to that point. “I've never been a fan of irony. I thought, "I've got to throw myself into this." And I thought most pop songs are about "Let's Go To Bed"--that's the bottom line pretty much--so I thought, "I'll just do that. I'll be very up front." ... It summed up the idiot pop side I'd been fighting against."

and

"It was because I wanted the group - I didn't want to be 'Robert Smith, ex-Cure,' so the only way I thought to escape that was to keep the vehicle of the Cure moving. I thought the best way to do that was to write the most extreme song, the most anti - Pornography type of song, with the most banal elements, and that was Lets Go To Bed. And once we'd done that, it sort of cracked the whole thing open, and people no longer thought of us as very gloomy."

and

"A nonsense set of words to complement what I then considered to be a hideous piese of 'commercial' pap... but it grew on me...!!!"

and

"It's a foolish title and the lyrics don't mean a thing. Musically, I mixed in everything bad I'd heard for years but even when we'd recorded it, I still didn't think it was horrible enough. So Bill remixed it and there it was!"

Whew! I know...I hate reading the long posts too. But, if you're interested, there you go.

he is tottally being cynical in this song, it seems to me though that him and his girl are both just playing hard to get from each other. i kind of get the idea that they are just messing around and it nothing serious enough to end the relationship over. Robert Smith is playing to her like he can get any girl he wants, but he just wants to feel special, and act like she has to win his affection. But she feels exactly the same. so both of them are pretty much playing the game back and forth. Untill Robert gives in and says "Lets go to bed" where they have crazy sex all night!! haha

thats my interpretation, cuz the same situation has happened to me plenty of times.

What nostalgia this song evokes! When I was a teenager it had a sort of cult-within-a-cult status all its own among Cure fans. You know how enthusiastic teenagers can be about anything that even appears to have the slightest, remotest bit to do with sex. Since you just have to look at this song literally, no interpretation required, to see the sex references, we were mad for it. Everybody got a particular kick out of the line "You think you're tired now, wait until three." Clearly, it was universally agreed, the narrator is (or is trying to come across as) a master seducer.

Another fond recollection from my teen years that's kindled by this song is jaded-chic. This was the period when it was considered cool to be cynical and alienated and wear black a lot. (This in turn generated a meta-cynicism movement in rejection of what was viewed – probably correctly, in many cases – as merely affected cynicism. IMO this was what generated such phenomena as, for example, South Park, which often makes fun of the sort of cynicism associated with "Generation X.") The distrust (or perhaps disdain would be a better word) for authority was in some ways kind of like in the '60s, although the widespread cynicism was very different from the peace-and-love mood of the '60s. (I'm not old enough to recall the '60s or even more than a tiny bit of the '70s, first-hand, so this is based on the popular reputation of that era along with stories I've heard from older friends.) It often provided, at the very least, a convenient excuse to ignore rules and such; for example, it was widely agreed that the school administration's priority was covering their own asses.

I remember a number of times when friends or acquaintances would listen to a group for a while, then decide that group had gotten too 'commercial.' (This typically meant that the band in question had yielded to pressure from their manager and agreed to appear on MTV.) Other quirks of this time: at some point (I believe around 1990 or '89), it became not merely socially acceptable, but actually cool to be on antidepressants. I accidentally provoked a brief wave of interest in Voltaire among my classmates when I did a book report on Candide (which rejects the more standard Englightenment claim that humanity is essentially good, with numerous counterexamples as well as plenty of humor and irony).

Approaches to relationships among this crowd varied, but a lot of people rejected the idea of monogamous or long-term relationships and took a rather Marquis de Sade approach (another Enlightenment figure who didn't buy into the typical world-view of the philosophes) - okay, not quite that extreme, but they did like his idea of "do whatever feels good," and I recall his name getting dropped a lot. When I was in college, a lot of people rejected marriage as a discriminatory institution that privileged heterosexual monogamy, but some went further and rejected monogamous relationships in general, or even relationships in general. (Most of these people have since gotten married.) Nobody used the phrase "make love," or referred to being in a relationship as "dating" or the like: people in relationships were "having sex" or, if one preferred to be euphemistic, "hanging out." The new approach was to have sex with any of your friends whom you found attractive. In our 1st year of college, a lot of people in my class got involved in open relationships with people several years older than ourselves. Sex was something you did for fun, whenever you felt like it and could find a willing and attractive partner, although there were long-term relationships (that is, people who slept together on a regular basis). Needless to say, this led to a lot of one-night stands and brief relationships (and a lot of things people regretted later; many of us had arrived at college not recognizing the awkwardness that being around a former sex partner with whom one has had a falling-out could entail). (Fortunately, there was also a strong emphasis on using condoms; anyone who refused to use one probably would have been ostracized, or at the very least, would have an extremely tough time finding anyone willing to sleep with them.)

Despite the fact that the themes of their songs are often sharply opposed to this attitude toward life and relationships, the Cure was very popular among the disaffected, black-wearing crowd in the mid-late '80s and later on (I think the change started sometime in the early or mid-'90s, but it's hard to be sure), the beyond-cynical too-cool-to-bother-wearing-black types. (I guess this is "Generation Y;" my sister called them "Generation 'Y Not?'" in honor of of their seeming willingness to try anything.)

The point I'm getting to is that I'm not sure that Robert Smith is liable to be entirely pleased with the effect that his work seems to have had on young people. What do other people think? Has he commented on this matter?

why in the unplugged version does he say six instead of three? this is going to keep me up late at night....

a song about insomnia!! what a funky riff. but i think it is (and probably obviously is) a song about lack of sleep, and going insane because you've hardly slept.

You think you're tired now But wait until three... Laughing at the Christmas lights You remember From December

fantastic.

I'm with twilight 2007. This is simply about all the silly games and posing of people who want to sex with each other. "wait until three (or six)" is a boast.

But these two have been together before, and perhaps they are afraid to admit there could be some more vulnerable, emotional aspect to their relationship.

I don't know who played the bass, but it is certainly very odd. The bass line features more prominently on the Milk Mix (from the "Close to Me" remix single?)--worth checking out.

I love what Robert Smith said in a 2003 interview: "All pop songs are basically saying ‘please go to bed with me.’ So I’m going to make it as blatant as possible, set it to this cheesy synth riff – everything I hated about music at that time. It was junk. Lol and I recorded it, Fiction put it out, and suddenly we’re getting 15 plays a day on American radio. Sod’s law, isn’t it." I think it's supposed to be funny. They just want to have sex but spend the whole night being coy and shy about it, then finally get down to it - by that time they're too tired to have any pretense.

HA!

Just laughing at myself and my interpretation of "let's go to bed" as meaning "let's let it go, let's just go to sleep", spoken between two already in a relationship, and having a knockdown dragout and the same problems they've always encountered together. I never even THOUGHT of the sex aspect in this song. :)

The two of us together again But it's just the same A stupid game

And what won't they each be the first to say? I'm sorry. I love you. I need you. That kind of thing.

You think you're tired now But wait until three... Laughing at the Christmas lights You remember From December

You think you're tired of fighting and feeling punchy now? Well, it's gonna get worse, honey. Because we're gonna be up til all night, going over those past relationships and jealousy (another girl, another name) and that whole "but you've changed" thing. The same things we've always fought over. The same stupid game.

lets quit fighting, come one meet me half way, i wont care if you dont and i dont want to if you dont. we get together, things seem 'perfect as cats' and then we slip back into the fighting. im too tired to fight. 'lets' please just 'go to bed'

Let's just go to bed and forget about the games....it's too late to care anyways....just do it!