Songfacts®:

• This song is about maintaining the manly image and hiding your tears behind your eyes. Tough guys don't always get the girl.
• The Cure formed in the torn-and-frayed London suburb of Crawley, where their sensitive side was not always appreciated. This song didn't go over well with some of the hardened punks that came to their shows, but the band remained unwavering in their approach and made a strong connection with legions of fans.
• Nathan Larson covered this in 1999, and his version was used as the title song of the film Boys Don't Cry, for which Hilary Swank won the 1999 Oscar for Best Actress. Larson is the husband of Nina Persson, the lead singer of the Swedish pop group The Cardigans.
• "Boys Don't Cry" was The Cure's second single, following "Killing An Arab." Released in June 1979, it wasn't a hit at the time, but in 1986 a new version was issued as a single in which the original track was remixed and the vocals re-recorded. This time it reached #22 in the UK charts.
• Oleander recorded this for their album February Son and released their version as a single. Reel Big Fish often plays the song in concert, and Razorlight performed this at The Cure's "MTV Icon" ceremony in 2004. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Bertrand - Paris, France
• The track also provided the title for British Children's laureate Malorie Blackman's 2011 young adult novel. The book tackles issues of masculinity and teenage fatherhood.
• This was also used in these movies:
  
  Valley Girl (2020)
  25 km/h (2018)
  Me And You (2012)
  Friends With Benefits (2011)
  Nick And Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)
  Summerhood (2008)
  Starter For 10 (2006)
  The Wedding Singer (1998)
  
  And in these TV series:
  
  Hanna ("Friend" - 2019)
  My Mad Fat Diary ("Friday" - 2014)
  How I Met Your Mother ("Where Were We?" - 2006)
  Opposite Sex ("The Virgin Episode" - 2000)
• The song grew out of Robert Smith's frustration over being expected to conform to an outdated view of masculinity. "When I was growing up, there was peer pressure on you to conform to be a certain way," the Cure frontman told NME in 2019. "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. 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 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.'"
• In a 2000 interview with Rolling Stone, an older-and-wiser Smith gave his assessment on the band's early pop numbers, saying, "The pop songs like 'Boys Don't Cry' are naive to the point of insanity [laughs]. But considering the age I was and the fact that I had done nothing apart from go to school - no real life experience, everything was taken from books - some of them are pretty good."
• The Cure performed "Boys Don't Cry" live for the 1000th time on December 13, 2022, at the OVO Arena in Wembley.
• "Boys Don't Cry" became The Cure's first song to pass one billion streams on Spotify in January 2026. To celebrate the milestone, Rhino/Elektra released a limited-edition 12" vinyl, 7" vinyl, CD & Digital, giving the track a fresh promotional hook and catalog push. The combination of the billion-streams publicity, its popularity on TikTok videos and the new formats led to it re-entering the UK Singles Chart at #39 in late January 2026.