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Fact #191960

When:

Short story:

The Cure release a new single, Wrong Number, on Fiction Records. It will peak at No62 in the UK, spending just two weeks on the chart.

Full article:

Robert Smith : It was a collaboration with an outside writer. In January 1997 I was invited to sing a David Bowie's 50th birthday concert in New York and I'd gone over a couple of days early to rehearse and spend some time with the people there. I got talking to his guitarist, Reeves Gabrels, and David's producer, Mark Plati. Coincidentally, Mark was a big Cure fan and during the week I spent in new York we spent time together and agreed it would be good to do something musically.

The Cure were just about to bring out the second volume of singles from the last ten years - Galore - and I wanted to put a new single on there. I'd written something I thought would work so I went to the studio with Reeves and Mark and that's how Wrong Number came about. I had the music but, lyrically, it was based on a phone call I had in New York and the conversation that formed the song took place in the course of me getting to know Reeves and Mark, which is why I wanted to do it with them. Time and place all just seemed to tie in together.

It was the last single we released. It did well in America and made the Top Ten in European countries. The voice at the end saying 'Sorry, wrong number' is the wife of a friend that we rang out of the blue. We purposely asked for the wrong name and she said, 'Sorry, wrong number,' right on cue.
(Source : interview in the book Inspirations by Michael Randolfi, Mike Read and David Stark, published by Sanctuary)


Robert Smith : It's very fluid. It doesn't have verse-chorus as much; the stuff we started off doing this summer with the band I've kind of since disregarded and I've put in a studio at home. I've been doing a lot of stuff on my own just using loops and samples and things. It's taken quite a change in direction over the last two months and become very kind of ethereal. And it was very kind of rock about two or three months ago.

I find a lot of dance music is cerebral in a funny way - just trying to use different combinations of sounds and loops and those kind of things. I got very into the hypnotic sound of seven or eight-minute dance tracks.
(Source : interview with JamTV, 1997)