This song is about a dreamy day near the seashore with a loved one. Lead singer Robert Smith was brought up in the town of Crawley in Southeast England, which is about 40 miles from Beachy Head (a cliff and notorious suicide hotspot).
It's a very romantic song that reads like a screenplay, opening with some dialog from the leading lady:
Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick
The one that makes me screamThere's a kiss on the dizzy edge, the glow of love, and then our hero wakes up alone. This being a Cure song, it's an ambiguous ending: We're not sure if it was all a dream, or just seems like one because it's too good to be true, as if he's in heaven.
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Suggestion credit:
Wim - Brussels, Belgium
According to Rolling Stone magazine, this was cut at a vineyard in the South of France, and is Robert Smith's favorite Cure song. The band's girlfriends hung out at the sessions, which influenced the music: "The girls would sit on the sofa in the back of the control room and give the songs marks out often," Smith said. "So there was a really big female input."
Robert Smith was in the throes of love when he wrote this song. His girlfriend, Mary Poole, he met when he was 14; in 1988, a year after "Just Like Heaven" was released, they got married, and it stuck.
According to Robert Smith, when he wrote this song, he told his bandmates, "I'll never write something this good again."
One of his favorite moments during a Cure live show is when the piano section comes in and he can scan the crowd to see the reactions.
The video was directed by Tim Pope and shot at the English cliffs that inspired the song. Smith's girlfriend, Mary Poole, is the apparition who dances with him at the cliffside.
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In the November 2003 issue of Blender magazine, Robert Smith said: "In 1987, my wife, Mary, and I lived in a small two-bedroom flat in North London. The other room was my music room. Just about the only discipline I had in my life was self-imposed. I set myself a regimen of writing 15 days a month; otherwise I'd have just got up in mid-afternoon and watched TV until the pubs opened, then gone out drinking. I knew as soon as I'd written it that it was a good pop song.
Although I didn't realize it at the time, the structure is very similar to 'Another Girl, Another Planet,' by The Only Ones, which I can still vividly remember hearing on the radio late at night in the mid-'70s. The main difference is that as the song progressed, I introduced some different chord changes, which give it that slightly melancholic feeling. The song is about hyperventilating - kissing and fainting to the floor. Mary dances with me in the video because she was the girl, so it had to be her. The idea is that one night like that is worth 1,000 hours of drudgery."
The original demo of this song was titled "Shivers."
The version released as a single was remixed by Bob Clearmountain. He has worked with The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, among others.
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, the band's seventh album, broke The Cure in America, where it reached the Top 40 on the albums chart and sold a million copies.
This was the album's third single and gave the band their highest entry on the Hot 100 (#40) until "
Lovesong" peaked at #2 in 1989.
The 2005 romantic comedy Just Like Heaven, starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, borrows its name from this song. Katie Melua recorded a cover version for the soundtrack, and The Cure's rendition plays over the end credits.
This was also used in these movies:
The Beach Bum (2019)
Gringo (2018)
Café de Flore (2011)
Going The Distance (2010)
Stay Cool (2009)
Adventureland (2009)
The Man Who Loved Yngve (2008)
Judas Kiss (1998)
The Evening Star (1996)
And these TV shows:
The Goldbergs ("You're Not Invited" - 2014)
New Tricks ("The Queen's Speech" - 2014)
Eastwick ("Pilot" - 2009)
Fringe ("Bound" - 2009)
True Blood ("Burning House Of Love" - 2008)
The L World ("Lifecycle" - 2008)
Cold Case ("Who's Your Daddy" - 2004)